I followed Meghan Markle’s parenting tip – but after six years, I quit

‘Hi, baby, you’ve finally joined us, I love you’, I wrote, sitting at my computer.

Pressing send on the email, I felt elated, even though I knew it wouldn’t be read for years.

Before my daughter, Mara, was born in 2009, I did something slightly unconventional: I set up an email address in her name. 

At the time, I was drained, emotionally raw, and thrilled about the little human that came into the world. I hadn’t planned on doing it, I just needed somewhere to convey all that I was feeling, and I didn’t want those words to be lost. 

So, I sent her an email.

I never imagined that one small message would turn into a daily ritual that lasted six years.

When I discovered that Meghan Markle writes emails to her children with Prince Harry – son, Archie, five and daughter, Lilibet, three – every night, on addresses she has made up, I understood right away why. 

On The Jamie Kern Lima Show, Meghan explained that she ‘thought it was such a great time capsule to create for them because I used to have scrapbooks and photo albums, but we’re past that generation now’.

And I felt the same.

Every single day, through my daughter’s development, sickness, holidays, tantrums, and milestones, I wrote to her. Some were short: a line or two about something she’d said or done that was funny or the way she looked cute in her baby grow. 

Others were long emails about what I was learning as her mother.

The idea does sound mushy and maybe it is but to me, it was also a lifeline.

Motherhood is overwhelming but those emails made it easier to stop, think, and hold on to the moments that otherwise would become a blur. They were a way of keeping track of not just her life as it was unfolding, but mine as well.

The messages weren’t edited or curated; they were raw, real, and full of love.

The Duchess of Sussex and I lead very different lives, but I understood that compulsion, to talk to your child before they are old enough to even hear you. To leave a written legacy of your love.

Meghan and I are both mums, wanting our children to have their memories. 

Like when I wrote to my daughter telling her how she went through a phase of only wearing pink, or her tantrum in a restaurant. 

I wrote to remember it all.

By the time my daughter turned six, I had written thousands of emails.

And then overnight, almost, it stopped.

Mara began asking to have her own email and when I told her that she actually already had an account, and someday it would be hers, her eyes lit up.

It was then I realised that she had her own voice, and shortly after I stopped my daily correspondence. 

Aged six, I finally gave her the password. 

She sat down and opened the inbox. I watched her scroll through six years of messages and cry. 

‘Mum, you actually wrote all these?’

‘I did,’ I said, ‘every day.’

She read a few aloud and laughed. She didn’t say much otherwise and left it. But later that night sent me an email in return.

A single sentence: ‘I love you.’

In the blink of an eye, the monologue became a dialogue. 

We started emailing back and forth, short messages, silly jokes, photos. 

It was bittersweet. I missed my nighttime routine, but I realised that the emails had done their job.

I wonder sometimes what she’ll do with all those messages. Will she read them when she’s older? At age 25 and still unsure of what to do with her life? When she’s a mother herself, wondering if she’s doing enough or considering starting her own correspondence with her children?

I hope so.