Off The Record
Raised In Struggle, She Rose To Fame — Then Faced A Fight For Her Life
This celebrity’s journey from multiracial girlhood and TV dinners to royal renown has not been an easy one. Her path became one of self-discovery, characterized by personal struggles, such as a potentially fatal postpartum complication, and the fortitude to endure.
Neither a red carpet nor flashing lights raised her. Instead, her early years were characterized by microwave lunches, inquiries about her race and appearance, and a subtle sense of not quite fitting in.
Nevertheless, she carried a spirit of perseverance into adulthood, where she developed a profession, fell in love with a prince, and had a child. But beneath the titles and headlines was a woman dealing with very personal issues. To learn more about the famous person behind the spotlight, continue reading.
Humble Beginnings
Long before the world knew her name, this famous person was just a young child trying to find her place in the world. Racial, class, and situational disparities influenced her early years as she grew up in a mixed-race home in Los Angeles.
As a self-described “latchkey kid” who preferred microwave meals or fast food for companionship, she frequently returned home from school to an empty house due to her parents’ lengthy work hours. Later, she stated:
“I grew up with a lot of fast food and also a lot of TV tray dinners. It feels like such a different time but that was so normal with the microwaveable kids’ meals…watching ‘Jeopardy!’ and having a lot of fast food.”
Although her home life was filled with love, she quickly became aware that she didn’t quite fit into the world around her. “My dad is Caucasian and my mom is African American. I’m half black and half white,” she shared.
Those differences didn’t go unnoticed. “I just remember my mom telling me stories about taking me [to] the grocery store and a woman going, ‘Whose child is that?’ She’s like, ‘It’s my child.’ ‘No, you must be the nanny. Where’s her mom?'” she recalled.
As this celebrity grew older, she began to define herself.
Her early experiences influenced her self-perception, and the presumptions others made about her family had a lasting effect. After her parents divorced, she and her mother relocated to a mostly Black community around forty minutes away from the Valley, where she had grown up.
Despite the disruption, she was supported by a tight-knit group of women — her grandmother, aunt, and her mother’s friends — who all pitched in. “We had a nice network of women who really helped me raise [her],” her mother revealed.
“She was always so easy to get along with, very congenial, making friends. You know, she was a very empathic child, very mature,” she added.
Still, their relationship wasn’t always typical. “I remember asking [her] did I feel like her mom and she told me that I felt like her older, controlling sister,” her mother admitted. As this celebrity grew older, she began to define herself. She candidly shared:
“I was a big nerd growing up. This is, like, an important part that people don’t understand about me. Like I was not the pretty one. My entire identity was wrapped up in the smart one.”
This mental assurance influenced her from a young age, more so than her physical appearance. Her handwritten letter challenging a sexist commercial, which ultimately resulted in its modification, was one of her pivotal moments.
At the same time, her family’s financial situation meant that even small pleasures came with big appreciation.
“I grew up on the $4.99 salad bar at Sizzler. […] What I do remember was the feeling: I knew how hard my parents worked to afford this because even at five bucks, eating out was something special, and I felt lucky,” she shared.
Then things took a turn for the worst. Her father won $750,000 in the lotto when she was nine years old. The family was able to improve training and education thanks to the unforeseen windfall.
But off-stage, her identity remained complex.
Her half-brother recalled how it helped change the trajectory of her life, stating, “That money allowed [her] to go to the best schools and get the best training. [She] is someone who has always had laser focus. She knows what she wants and she doesn’t stop until she gets it.”
By the time she entered elementary school, that emphasis was already apparent. She penned a letter to her principal upon graduating at the age of eleven, which she would subsequently read out loud when she visited her former school.
“When I am rich and famous and I write my life story, I will talk about you and the school so you will be known worldwide,” this celebrity read. However, she remained cognizant of the importance of money.
This star began scooping frozen yogurt at her first job at the age of 13. In order to help with the necessities, she took on babysitting, served tables, and even worked at Little Orbit Donuts, a donut business. She disclosed:
“I worked all my life and saved when and where I could — but even that was a luxury — because usually it was about making ends meet […].”
As she immersed herself in theater in high school, her passion for performance gained center stage against the backdrop of her family’s financial circumstances. This love was influenced by growing up on TV set sets.
Her father worked as a lighting director on “Married… with Children,” and she often joined him after school. “Every day after school for 10 years, I was on the set of ‘Married…with Children,’ which is a really funny and perverse place for a little girl in a Catholic school uniform to grow up,” she said.
Off-stage, however, her identity remained nuanced. Years later, on her thirty-third birthday, this celebrity reminisced in a since-deleted personal blog post, “My teens were even worse — 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,” she continued. As she moved into adulthood, she carried with her the weight of expectations—and insecurities. This celebrity is revealed.
“My 20s were brutal — a constant battle with myself, judging my weight, my style, my desire to be as cool/as hip/as smart/as ‘whatever’ as everyone else.”
She was always under pressure to fit in, to live up to unrealistic expectations, and to discover her voice. However, the tone of her reflections changed by the time she was in her thirties.
“I am 33 years old today. And I am happy,” she wrote. “And I say that so plainly because, well…it takes time. To be happy. To figure out how to be kind to yourself. To not just choose that happiness, but to feel it.”
Although she hadn’t yet entered the world’s limelight, this prominent figure had already started to forge her own way. In actuality, what the world would perceive as a fairy tale ascent was the product of tenacity, early hardship, and a young lady who never gave up on her dreams.
From Royal Romance to a Life Redefined
Meghan Markle is the celebrity whose path we have followed, from fast food dinners and high school stages to brave perseverance and a quest for self-awareness.
The American actress and Prince Harry were married on May 19, 2018, at St. George’s Chapel in Windsor, two years after Prince Harry announced their romance in late 2016.
Prince Archie, born in May 2019, and Princess Lilibet, born in June 2021, are the two children that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex have since become parents.
Although they were quite happy when their children were born, Markle subsequently disclosed that motherhood also presented unanticipated difficulties, including ones that endangered her life.
Some time after welcoming her first child, she experienced a miscarriage — a loss she later wrote about in raw and intimate detail.
In April 2025, she released the first episode of her podcast, “Confessions of a Female Founder.” Whitney Wolfe Herd, the founder of Bumble, talked candidly about a scary period of her life that nearly ended in tragedy: a postpartum health crisis.
“We both had very similar experiences — though we didn’t know each other at the time — with postpartum, and we both had preeclampsia. Postpartum preeclampsia,” she said. “It’s so rare and so scary,” the Duchess added.
Markle continued, “And you’re still trying to juggle all of these things, and the world doesn’t know what’s happening quietly. And in the quiet, you’re still trying to show up for people — mostly for your children — but those things are huge medical scares.”
Whitney responded, “I mean life or death, truly.” While Markle survived that ordeal, heartbreak would soon return in a quieter, more personal form. Some time after welcoming her first child, she experienced a miscarriage — a loss she later wrote about in raw and intimate detail.
According to her, the day started off like any other, with typical tasks like taking her kid out of his cot, picking up errant crayons, and preparing breakfast.
However, she fell to the ground with her infant in her arms and hummed a lullaby to calm them both after experiencing a sudden, severe cramp. She knew then and there. The Duchess disclosed:
“[…] As I clutched my firstborn child, that I was losing my second.”
Hours later, she was in a hospital bed with Prince Harry beside her, both of them overcome with grief. “I felt the clamminess of his palm and kissed his knuckles, wet from both our tears,” she recalled.
As she stared at the sterile walls around her, one thought took hold — that healing had to start with a single, human question, “Are you OK?”
Thankfully, the pair survived, and despite all of these intensely private struggles, Meghan Markle has continued to develop herself, a process that started long before she came into the public eye.
She once recalled a pivotal moment early in her acting career, “I must have been about 24 when a casting director looked at me during an audition and said, ‘You need to know that you’re enough. Less makeup, more Meghan.'”
She carried that message throughout her thirties and beyond. The message, in her own words, was straightforward: seek affirmation from within rather than from a career, a relationship, or public acceptance.
“You need to know that you’re enough,” she wrote. And with time, experience, and hard-won wisdom, she began to believe it.
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