From insecure teen to royal TV star — she nearly died after giving birth

At first, before becoming a royal, global news and living in a palace, there was a young girl sifting through her thoughts while sitting cross-legged with TV dinners.

She didn’t live in wealth or luxury during her childhood. Actually, growing up in Los Angeles for her meant being between two worlds, two cultures and sometimes hearing two very similar stories.

Because her parents were white and Black, Maya Angelou soon understood that people didn’t know how to handle her and she didn’t always feel sure either.

She remembers that she was made to feel uncomfortable by the odd looks and curious murmurs at a young age.

Whenever they went to the grocery store, people would stare between my sister and my mother and ask, “Where’s her mom?” assuming that my sister was with the darker-skinned woman.

She could tell that her mother was smiling politely, but these encounters remained weird to her.

Life at that time wasn’t luxurious. Because her mother was a yoga instructor and makeup artist and her father worked in TV, she would be left alone as a

“latchkey kid” in the afternoon to prepare hot meals and watch Jeopardy! as if learning from the show. Diane remembered thinking that she was invisible in everyone’s eyes, not good enough in any respect.

After separating, her parents settled into different homes and Serena chose to spend more time with her father each day. The impact of emotion is as strong on memories as the impact of actual facts.

It wasn’t the meals or doing chores that mattered; what really struck me was her feeling of ‘otherness’. In places where people come from many different backgrounds.

Not only in Black music. She stated once, “Because I am mixed race, I was somewhere in the middle.” The casting process had no idea what role to give her.

She would later say, “I was too different for the Black roles and too different again for the white ones.”

However, she managed to become the person she was meant to be, possibly because there was no other way. Even though she was not the pretty girl, she worked harder to be the smart one, she said.

After seeing a sexist commercial at 11, she protested by writing to the company and they changed what they had done. That was her very first time using her voice to get results.

She was informed from a young age about how much effort her parents exerted for the family. I usually had the $4.99 salad bar as a kid when visiting Sizzler, she mentioned. From time to time, they attended The Old Spaghetti Factory and it felt like we were in France’s Versailles Palace.

Still, her ambitions could not be condensed to a lengthy restaurant menu. She picked up a variety of jobs: babysitting, scooping donuts and handing out an ad. Since her dad was in the business, she used to visit sets like Married … with Children and this marked her first introduction to Hollywood despite being behind the cameras.

When she was 11, she told her school principal: “One day, I will turn our school into a well-known place.” Her decision was meant to be real.

Even so, the road to success had many ups and downs. For many years, there was very little work, small roles, stereotype casting or simple overseeing by casting directors. Even though she was smart, polished and wanted to do so much, she kept bumping up against the person others wanted her to be.

Then she appeared in Suits, a show that would make her a celebrity. She was Rachel Zane, a character who was sharp, ambitious and captivating. Her biggest impact was made outside the spotlight of the cameras.

In the year 2016, she met a prince. In the year 2018, she married him inside a castle. Fairy tales started, but regular life kept going on. Motherhood gave me joy and it came with its own set of dangers.

Afterward, she exposed that she dealt with a dangerous and seldom-seen condition called postpartum preeclampsia. Even though she’s always trying to be there for her family, especially the children, Hospes admitted it takes courage not to let the fear take over.

She also shared how painful it was to experience a miscarriage which many across the world could relate to after reading what she wrote. She accepted and felt the hurt as she lived through it. She benefited from it.

An introverted, awkward childhood of TV dinners and problems with identity became a tale of daring, being open and never stopping to find oneself.

The woman who used to go unnoticed is now a celebrity all over the world. When Meghan is put through intense media attention, disagreements with her family or global focus, she remains true to who she is, talks about her challenges and makes space for her voice.