Meghan Markle Struggled To Fit In During High School Because Of Her Race

From the outside looking in, it may appear that the Duchess of Sussex has the perfect life. Meghan Markle married a real-life prince and is now eagerly expecting their first child together. As a member of the royal family, she is granted a number of advantages and privileges that allow her to live a life that many would consider a dream. However, even the Duchess has faced her fair share of difficulties in life, according to Cosmopolitan.

Due to her confident and down-to-earth personality, it’s hard to believe that Markle ever struggled to find friends. However, she actually calls her high school years some of the most difficult times of her life. Like many teens, she battled with her self-identity, not quite sure how to fit in. Her feelings of confusion were partially due to her biracial ethnicity. She wasn’t black but she wasn’t white either, which made developing a strong clique of friends difficult.

In a heartfelt post written on her now-retired lifestyle blog The Tig, Markle opened up about these struggles and how she attempted to cope with them.

“My teens were even worse [than my twenties] – grappling with how to fit in, and what that even meant. My high school had cliques: the black girls and white girls, the Filipino and the Latina girls. Being biracial, I fell somewhere in between. So everyday during lunch, I busied myself with meetings – French club, student body, whatever one could possibly do between noon and 1pm- I was there. Not so that I was more involved, but so that I wouldn’t have to eat alone.”

It took years before Markle really felt she had a good grasp of her identity and established the sense of pride that she has now. Now many young mixed-race women look up to her as a positive role model, showing that they too can accomplish anything they set their minds to.

Markle found fame and success well before she was introduced to Prince Harry. Following her studies at Northwestern University, she made her way into the acting world. She is most known in the television world as Rachel Zane on the legal drama series Suits. She starred on the show from 2011 to 2017. When she wasn’t busy acting, she was running The Tig, the lifestyle blog she started herself. An outspoken feminist, Markle used the platform to share stories about influential women in hopes of inspiring others.