I know how Meghan Markle feels. I married into a family which was almost exactly the same

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex dropped many bombs in their interview, but I can’t stop thinking about the moments Meghanwasn’t talking. When Oprah asked a question, the camera zooming in as Meghan broke eye contact, slowly exhaling. I saw her doing the mental math I’ve done countless times — what to share, who to protect, how much grace to extend — a futile attempt to balance a forever lopsided equation. 

My phone lit up with messages from friends as that interview aired: Every time Meghan calls it the Firm, I think of your in-laws.

I am 25, in a conference room in Amsterdam, newly engaged. My partner is not a prince, but he was — in our early years — employed by a secretive, patriarchal family business that owns a retail empire. As we entered family office headquarters, pop art renditions of the company’s founding brothers stared down at us, like Warhol’s Marilyn sans eyeshadow. We were to meet with the family lawyer and the highest ranking “Uncle” (as older men in their version of the Firm are called) in HR — CEO of micromanaging the lives of distant cousins, arbiter of where you raise your children and how long between relocations.

“Everybody who gets married knows that you are really marrying the family too, but you weren’t just marrying a family: You were marrying a 1200-year old institution.” Oprah’s words hit hard. To me, only child of my white American father and Japanese immigrant mother, family has always meant us three. Marrying into a family with a Wikipedia page — one I didn’t find until a friend suggested I do some Googling, Dave and I already exchangingI love you’s — is something I too “went into naïvely.” 

Much of what Meghan shared felt familiar, minus the media scrutiny. “It’s a family business…there’s the family and then there’s the people who are running the Institution, those are two separate things.” I call Dave’s Institution “the Cult,” a tongue-in-cheek moniker I use only because we got out. Dave’s siblings, who are nothing but accepting, are separate from the Cult. I love them like the siblings I never had.

“Any regrets?” Harry: “No.” Meghan: “Believing them when they said I would be protected.” The Cult provided me two bodyguards, but what I needed was emotional support transitioning into a life detached from my previous reality. I cried a lot, alone in the largest apartment I’d ever lived in, watchingLaw & Order reruns just to see New York City, my home. It was a gilded cage. As Meghan said, “When the perception and the reality are two very different things, and you’re being judged on the perception but you’re living the reality of it, there’s a complete misalignment and there’s no way to explain that to people.”

I had my own regrets: converting to Catholicism; taking the family name. We’ve stopped attending church, our daughters unbaptized. In an uncommon move, I changed my name back. I continue to confound doctor’s office receptionists as my reason —keeping the husband, not his name! — doesn’t have a corresponding checkbox.

Meghan, riding to her first meeting with the Queen, didn’t realize she would have to curtsey, practicing with Harry outside Royal Lodge. If only Dave had known what was coming.

“If Dave becomes a partner, you must adhere to certain agreements. Like giving up your American citizenship, for tax purposes,” the lawyer said at that meeting before we got married. The penny dropped for me too.

“Never,” I replied.

“I can explain why this makes sense for the business, how other wives…”

“My answer is no.”

The irony of this ask, set against the fierce protection of their own familial identity, was not lost on me.

I continued to challenge versions of those men until Dave quit. My consequence: one-on-ones with high ranking Uncles. Meals at which I questioned why Uncles who were divorced or openly gay were not in the Cult. Their well-polished response: “He decided he was no longer a fit.” Only recently were women allowed in. The family’s Catholic values permeated everything. The more I pushed, the more I was silenced. 

Oprah’s now famous line: “Were you silent, or were you silenced?” 

I am among a handful of Americans to marry into the family, the only Asian I know of. Like Meghan, my light-skinned privilege is undeniable. And being the only person of color at table after table meant I was often the only person to see the racism and misogyny for what it was. I wish I had spoken up more — another regret.

Meghan, in her chicken coop, mentioned Disney’sLittle Mermaid: “She gets her voice back.” I can trace my childhood from Ariel — I was eight — through a decade of princesses. Can Meghan, six months my junior, do the same? 

When news of Megxit broke, friends texted, “Meghan is following in your footsteps!” Now, the depth of her anguish is clear, how unwilling the Firm was to help. I am grateful she got out. I got out too, and continue to model for my girls that it’s never too late to reclaim the parts of yourself larger systems can silence. I see the ways Meghan is doing the same.

“Do you think in some ways she saved you?” Oprah asked. “Without question,” Harry responded. Meghan disagreed: “I think he saved all of us… but you know, you need to want to be saved.”

Anri Wheeler is a writer and equity consultant from New York