Meghan Markle has urged women who are experiencing burn out to ‘be courageous’ and ‘ask for help’ on her latest podcast episode.

The Duchess of Sussex, 43, spoke with her friend and Girls Who Code founder Reshma Saujani on her new podcast Confessions of a Female Founder on Tuesday. 

The activist spoke about her health issues and how she continued travelling across the country, working with adults and children to promote her mission even after hospital appointments and miscarriages.

‘I got into this scary habit where I would be in a doctor’s office and they’d say “There’s no heartbeat” and I should’ve just gone home and gone to sleep and curl up with my husband,’ Reshma said. 

‘But I would just take a breath and show up in a living room, on a stage and just perform and often times I was performing in front of these children I desperately wanted and I just got really good at that but it was just eating me up inside.’ 

Reshma then said she asked her team to take over the organisation for a couple of months to give her some breathing space to come to terms with the loss. 

After listening intently to her friend open up about her struggles, Meghan then spoke about the importance of putting yourself first when experiencing mental exhaustion and burn out. 

‘The courage that it takes for a female founder, for a woman, when you’re on this path, you’re on this grind, you’ve set expectations… The courage that it takes to say “I need help” or “I need a pause” is tremendous,’ the former royal said.

‘And there’s no way to continue to show up and role model for these young women all the things that you aspire for them to have, that you wanted to have when you were a young girl, if you are not doing it with complete authenticity because you are so close to being burned out.’

The mother-of-three also quoted a children’s book, The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse, to help make her point.

‘I’ll have to get it for you,’ she told Reshma, before reading an extract from the book. 

‘The quote is “What is the bravest thing you’ve ever said?” asked the boy. “Help”, said the horse”.’ 

Meghan also spoke about the loss of her child on the podcast episode and said she had to ‘learn to detach‘. 

‘I’ll bring this up if you’re comfortable talking about it, because I know you’ve spoken publicly,’ Meghan said as she approached the conversation topic with Reshma on the Lemonada Media show.

Meghan likened miscarriage to letting go of a business and stepping down from a company.

She said: ‘I’ve spoken about the miscarriage that we experienced, and I think in some parallel way, you have to learn to detach from the thing that you have so much promise and hope for, and to be able to be ok at a certain point to let something go, something that you planned to love for a long time.’

After hearing the Duchess’ take, Reshma responded, saying: ‘I feel like you’re reading my diary, that’s really insightful.’

Writing in the New York Times in 2020, Meghan revealed she lost her second child after feeling a ‘sharp cramp’ while changing her son Archie’s nappy in July that year.

She told how she fell ill at home in Los Angeles before going to the hospital, describing herself watching her husband Prince Harry‘s ‘heart break as he tried to hold the shattered pieces of mine’ while grieving for their unborn baby.

Elsewhere, Meghan commented on her love of parenting Archie, six, and Lilibet, three, saying: ‘I love being a mum so much, it’s my favourite thing.‘

She added that when leaving them for a moment in another room, she can worry about their wellbeing and ‘scroll through pictures of them endlessly’.

‘My husband is like, “My love, can you just give yourself a minute? Why don’t you take a bath? Why don’t you go workout?” I’m like, “I know but I just want a cuddle”.’

It comes after Meghan revealed she had a ‘huge medical scare’ after giving birth in the first episode of her new podcast Confessions Of A Female Founder.

The Duchess of Sussex announced the arrival of the new Lemonada Media show by posting a series of throwback photos on Instagram of her selling cookies as a child.

In the first episode, Meghan spoke with her friend, the entrepreneur Whitney Wolfe Herd, who founded the female-focused dating app Bumble and co-founded Tinder.

Both women discussed how they had suffered from postpartum preeclampsia, a condition related to high blood pressure and excess protein in urine in the days or weeks after giving birth – which Wolfe Herd described as ‘life or death, truly’.