Meghan Markle is opening up life as a mom to Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet. During a candid panel discussion attended by PEOPLE about women in leadership on Saturday, May 11, Meghan discussed balancing motherhood with building a career.
The Duchess of Sussex, who shares son Archie, 5, and daughter Lilibet, who turns 3 in June, with husband Prince Harry, recalled asking the same question to her mentor Bonnie Hammer, who runs NBCUniversal, years ago when she was filming Suits.
“I remember having the good fortune at the time that she invited me to have breakfast, and I thought this was just the biggest deal in the world,” Meghan shared. “And I asked her that exact question. I said, ‘How do you find the balance?’ And she said, ‘You don’t, you’ll never find the balance.’ “And this was before I was married, this was before I had children, this is before all the things in my life have certainly had a plot twist,” the Duchess of Sussex said with a smile, referencing her marriage to Prince Harry.
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“And it struck me and it stayed with me for a long time because you say, ‘well how can you be so successful? And she’s a mother as well and she’s married and say that you’ll never find the balance? What does life feel like if it’s imbalanced?’
“What I think that means now is that that balance will always change for you. That balance, what seems balanced 10 years ago is going to shift,” she said “And so being a mom has always been a dream of mine. And I’m so fortunate that we have two beautiful, healthy, very chatty, sweet children.”
“I love being a mom, I love being a mom,” Meghan said. On the first day of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s trip to Nigeria, Meghan opened up about her children while visiting a school in Abuja. While speaking with a group of students, she detailed an emotional exchange that she recently had with her daughter Lilibet.
“Our daughter, Lili, she’s much, much tinier than you guys. She’s about to turn three. And a few weeks ago she looked at me and she would just see the reflection in my eyes. And she [goes], ‘Mama, I see me in you,’ ” Meghan told a class full of young children. “Oh, now she was talking really literally. But I hung onto those words in a very different way,” she said. “And I thought, yes, I do see me in you, and you see me in you.” Meghan then said, “As I look around this room, I see myself in all of you as well.”
