Serena Williams and Meghan Markle reveal the hard times they had to keep working despite their children being injured or in danger

Meghan Markle and Serena Williams had a difficult time when they were forced to continue working despite their children being injured or in danger.

The pro tennis legend was the first guest on the Duchess of Sussex’s podcast archetypeswhich was released Tuesday as part of a production deal between Archewell Audio and Spotify’s Gimlet Media.

During their hour-long conversation, titled “The Mistakes of Ambition,” the two women discussed times when their professional commitments were affected by their ability to care for their children. In Markle’s case, that included her and Prince Harry’s trip to South Africa in 2019, where the Duchess said a fire broke out at a residence where the couple and their son Archie, then four and a half months old, were staying. stay He stayed while he and the Duke of Sussex finished their conversation.

“As soon as we landed, we had to leave him in this house where he was kept. We immediately went to a formal engagement in this town called Nyanga,” recalls Markle. “There’s a moment when I climb a tree trunk and say that word to the women and girls, and we break off the engagement, get in the car, and they say, ‘There’s a fire in the house.’ What? “There was a fire in the boy’s room.”

According to Markle, they returned to where they were and found their nanny “in tears”. The Duchess reveals that a small decision by the nanny, who was usually stuck on Archie’s back with mud, would have saved him in the end.

“He had to put Archie to bed and he just said, ‘You know what? Let me go get some food downstairs,” says Markle. “His instinct was just, ‘Let me get him before I drop him.’ During the time she was downstairs, the nursery heater caught fire. There was no smoke detector. Someone smelled smoke in the hallway, entered, put out the fire. He must have slept there.”

Markle said everyone was “shocked” and “in tears” when they got back, but in the end “we had to leave the baby.”

“What should we do? Go out there and make another official appointment,” says Markle. “I said, ‘That doesn’t make sense.’ I said, ‘Can you tell people what happened?’

Markle’s story follows Williams after the tennis star, who recently announced he was retiring from the sport in part to focus on his family, learned he had to leave his daughter Olympia after the girl suffered an injury.

That same year, Williams gave birth to a daughter and the night before the 2018 French Open final, during which Williams donned her “coveralls” designed to prevent blood clots. Olympia fell off her chair and broke her wrist while tending to Williams, leaving the gold medalist and Grand Slam winner “devastated”.

“He fell like that, we went to the hospital and he had a small cut or fracture on his wrist so he had to get a pocket. We didn’t get back until four in the morning. Meanwhile, of course, this is the day I used to play,” says Williams. “I remember snuggling up all night and rocking myself to sleep. I just didn’t let him out of my sight at the time.”

Williams said she was “so mad at myself for letting this happen” that she only slept 30 minutes before she had to play.

“I somehow managed to win, but I was so emotionally drained and so emotionally drained that it was crazy,” she tells Markle. “So, like every night, I was with him the whole time. It was like this: “You will be with me”.

The tennis star goes on to say that “mothers do a lot” and doesn’t know how her mother of five did it.

After hearing Williams’ story and sharing his own, Markle points out how optics and archetypes when it comes to working parents at a high level can distort the reality of their lives.

“I think a lot that, optically, the focus ends up being the look and not the feel,” he says during the podcast. “Part of breaking these labels and these archetypes, these boxes that are put in place, is having some understanding of behind-the-scenes human moments that people may not be aware of and allowing others to relax.”