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Meghan Markle went back to her old high school and reminisced about her time there in the latest installment of her podcast series.
On Tuesday’s episode of Archetypes, the Duchess of Sussex revisited Immaculate Heart, the Los Angeles high school she attended from the ages of 12 to 17. She kicked off her podcast with a little field trip, saying, “Okay, ready team? This is all very nice and new. Isn’t it a pretty campus?” As she walked around the building, the royal remarked, “Oh, my gosh. How funny. My locker was right over here. I was somewhere smack in the middle. I don’t remember because these are your lockers when you’re in high school and the middle school lockers were up there.” She added, “You’ve heard me talk about Immaculate Heart on the series before and the influence it’s had on my life. And look I was there from ages, about 12 to 17 which are really formative years in your life. They certainly were for me. And let me just say, being back there, the energy, it was palpable. I was happy to be back there, and it was also really fun. Especially when I made a surprise visit and I popped in on some of the young ladies in volleyball practice.”
During the visit, Meghan also spoke with three recent graduates of her alma mater—Grace, Abigail, and Diana—to discuss some of the negative labels women face these days. The Duchess shared that she was surprised to learn that the three women had only ever heard the word “bimbo,” but weren’t familiar with the trope, a word the royal had previously discussed with Paris Hilton as a term that was omnipresent when she was younger. “I mean talk about aging myself,” she said. “But this idea of the ‘bimbo,’ the dumb blonde, this was something I grew up seeing all the time and here you go…they hadn’t.”
Meghan also opened up about an important piece of art in her home that was given to her by a longtime friend that helps keep her grounded. “There’s a piece of art in my sitting room. It’s not fancy. It’s kind of this rectangle shape, almost plaque-like, and it just says a few words very simply across it: ‘Human kind. Be both,’” she began. “My dear friend Genevieve gave it to me a couple years ago, and when I walk past it, it always makes me smile, of course, because I love her and our friendship and it reminds me of her. We’ve been super close since we were about 17, but also because it’s true. Human kind. Be both.” The Duchess continued, “And it got me thinking of other types of wordplay that resonate. And I specifically was thinking about something that I was told many years ago. You’re not just a human being. You’re a human, just being. Now, the woman who told me this was trying to remind me to just be easier on myself, sort of in the same vein of saying, ‘Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.’ Well, this is just another version of that same ilk of advice. You’re human, just being.”
Originally published in Vanityfair.com
