Meghan Markle paid a visit to her old school: ‘So many memories came flooding right back’

 Meghan Markle  took a walk down memory lane on the penultimate episode of   Archetypes  . The Duchess of Sussex, 41, visited her former school, Immaculate Heart, in the latest episode of her Spotify podcast, which was released on Nov. 22.

“I wanted to revisit a large piece of my origin story, my old school, and explore if these labels and boxes are part of the self-identification for the young women there, or if they’ve given themselves the space to be a human being,” Meghan said.

Upon arriving to the school with her team, Meghan noted, “This is all very nice and new. Isn’t it a pretty campus?” On the episode, the Duchess said, “You’ve heard me talk about Immaculate Heart on the series before and the influence it’s had on my life. And look, I was there from ages, about 12 to 17, which are really formative years in your life. They certainly were for me.”

She added, “And let me just say, being back there, the energy, it was, it was palpable. I was happy to be back there and it was also really fun especially when I made a surprise visit and I popped into some of the young ladies in volleyball practice.”

Meghan admitted that “so many memories came flooding right back” to her while walking through the halls of the school. During her visit, the Duchess dropped by one of her old classrooms. “As an adult, you come back into this environment, it feels so small. But when you’re in high school, this campus was so big,” Meghan said. She shared that back then the campus seemed to be bigger. “But, then again, so did everything in life. Just think about it… middle school and high school, this is a really big time for anyone in their life,” the Duchess said.

She continued, “You’re so young, you’re so impressionable, and you also think you know everything when you’re a teenager! But for young women especially, this is the time period in which you sorta start to look around at the culture, at society, at the messages you’re receiving – and you ask yourself, constantly, how am I supposed to be? At least, that was very much my experience of adolescence.”

Meghan spoke with three recent Immaculate Heart graduates during her visit to her alma mater earlier this year. “So here’s what I wanted to ask them. I wanted to fully understand, do the stigmas and labels that I grew up with still hold the same weight,” she said. The penultimate episode of Archetypes also featured Amanda Gorman, Sex and the City author Candace Bushnell, and Michaela Jae Rodriguez.