Meghan does not have a close relationship with anyone in her family except her mother. The entire world saw that on her wedding day. She has received a lot of criticism for it, but it is not as unusual as some people may think. There are a lot of people out there who are estranged from their families for one reason or another. It is not unusual for a mother and her children to live completely estranged from both sides of the child's family for one reason or another.
My sense is that a lot of people want to lay claim to Meghan now that she has made something of herself. But when she was coming up, when her mother was struggling to raise her daughter, where were these people? They had kept their distance because they saw Doria and Meghan as "other."
It is clear that Meghan had a close enough relationship with her dad, Thomas Markle. But, something happened that does not make much sense.
Meghan has apparently had a "black sheep" reputation on her father's side of her family and this is because of her mother, Doria. Doria was definitely off-brand for Thomas Markle, much in the way that Meghan is off-brand for Harry. Doria was not Thomas' usual type and she was not the usual type in the Pennsylvania family from which Thomas came. I have heard that the part of Pennsylvania where Thomas Markle is from can be kind of "close-minded." So, this interracial couple thingy that was Thomas and Doria was frowned upon from the get-go (no one will admit this) and the product of their union, Meghan, was automatically going to be "other" and, worse things, like the "black sheep." And no pun is intended here. But it is what it is. My sense is that this was the environment that Meghan and her mother had to function in, while married to Thomas Markle.
The marriage obviously did not last. But there was a child involved and she had to live with this stigma of being the child that was non-conforming. It is not that anyone hated her in the family necessarily, but she just stood out because she was from a different flock of sheep on her father's side. No real bonds formed between Meghan and her father's side of the family for this reason. There was knowledge of each other's existence, but there was no bonding as members of the same family. There was just distance and void. This might be why, in part, Meghan has described herself as an "only child."
Meghan knew and knows that she was automatically thought of as "less" because of her mother, and she has always tried to over-compensate for this. As a consequence, Meghan makes a point of reminding herself that "I am enough" every chance she gets because she has always felt that she was less in the family because her mother was "'non-conforming" in Thomas' family circle.
Meghan has always tried to prove that she is not "less", but that indeed she is "enough." I don't think she ever felt fully accepted, though. She never felt like she fully belonged. She never felt like an equal who was on equal footing with the rest. She did not feel loved by them and this probably has given her a complex. This is why when she felt rejected by the royal family, her first instinct was that it was déja vue, and so she ran for her life. She could not do it a second time, proving that she is enough.
The flip side is that Meghan over-achieved and over-compensated to make up for this perception of her, that she is "less". She thought it would resolve the deficit, and make her equal, but it only put her in a worse position because now, the "black sheep" had outshined the others in the flock. Meghan had sought to over-compensate for perceived deficits, out-did herself, and caused herself a ton of trouble within the flock. Her over-achievement became the thing that did her in. So now, if there is a "black sheep" in this flock, it is no longer Meghan. And no one in her family can handle that paradigm shift. One could argue that some members of the family set out to bring her down a few notches and put her back into her "black sheep place."
The reason Meghan eventually chose to just distance herself is that she realized it was the only way to keep her self-esteem and sanity intact because she could not dim her light to make her family feel good about themselves. She needed to do her, even if it did not conform to their expectations of her. She found that she was happier when she kept her distance and did her own thing and left these people alone. It is not that she is the only person who ever had to do this with family. And she would have gotten away with it if she had not married such a high-profile man.
image credit flickr creative commons
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