Meghan Markle’s mother Doria Ragland makes surprise appearance on podcast: ‘Hey, mommy!’

‘At home, women just work really, really hard,’ Meghan Markle said on a new episode of her podcast

The Duchess of Sussex had a surprise guest during the latest episode of her podcast: her mother, Doria Ragland.

In a new episode of her Spotify podcast Archetypes – titled “Good Wife/Bad Wife, Good Mom/Bad Mom” – Meghan Markle spoke with actor Pamela Adlon and Sophie Trudeau, wife of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, about the “whirlwind” of motherhood.

While preparing for the episode, Meghan coincidentally received a FaceTime call from her own mother. “All right. So the first one is you said – oh sugar, my mom’s FaceTiming me,” Meghan is heard saying. “Hey, mommy!”

“Hey, how’s my girl?” her mother is heard saying over the phone.

“I’m okay. I’m hanging in there. It’s okay,” Meghan replied. “I’m recording right now. Do you want to see?”

“I see,” Ragland said.

When Meghan asked if she could call back later, her mother made a sweet comment when she noticed that her daughter looked happy.

“You have on a smiley face,” Ragland said, to which Meghan responded: “I have on a smiley face. I love you.”

“I love you, too. I’ll see you on Saturday,” her mother ended.

Meghan Markle’s parents Doria Ragland and Thomas Markle divorced when Meghan was six years old, and Meghan lived full time with her mother. Ragland lives in Los Angeles, not far from the Montecito home where Harry and Meghan are raising their two children: Archie Harrison, three, and one-year old Lilibet “Lili” Diana.

Once off the phone call, Meghan reflected on the unfair expectations and pressures placed on mothers and parents.

“With this episode on my brain, it got me thinking about all the ways my mom supported me, how she took care of me and the house and herself, and how she just juggled so much,” the duchess explained. “The amount that women carry, that they navigate – it’s immense and it’s often the most thankless unpaid labor there is. There’s no union. There’s no lunch break. There’s nothing like that. At home, women just work really, really hard.”

“A lot of that work is born out of necessity, but so much of it is also born out of expectations – the idea that we need to fit the exact cookie cutter shape the world wants to jam us into,” she added.

Earlier in the episode, Meghan Markle gave an update on her and Prince Harry’s daughter, Lilibet. The Duchess of Sussex revealed that their one-year-old child has just started walking as she joked that she’s “in the thick of it”.

The former actor also shared a glimpse at her morning routine with two young children when she noted that it “can only get more chaotic as they get older”.

“But, for me, it’s monitors on for the kids to hear them, always up with Lili, get her downstairs, then a half hour later, Archie’s up,” Meghan said about her daily routine.

She then “start[s] doing his lunchbox right before he’s up while I have her, getting her a little nibble, my husband’s helping me get him downstairs...”

“I make breakfast for all three of them,” Meghan said. “It’s very important to me. I love doing it. ‘For me, it just feels like the greatest way to start the morning.”