I am BEYOND pleased to see Ms. Doria Ragland looking so beautiful and speaking on-camera on Netflix’s Harry & Meghan. Doria is my favorite part so far, and I definitely think it’s worth noting that Doria understood *immediately* that her daughter’s romance with Harry would be seen and discussed through a very specific racial – and racist – lens once their romance became public. Doria knew when Meghan didn’t. Doria wanted to tell Meghan to prepare for it before Meghan was ready to hear it. Doria expressed regret for what (she says) is her failure to properly prepare Meghan for how people would react to her as a biracial Black woman. But Doria is also there to talk about what Meghan was like as a child, and you can see her brimming with pride for her daughter.

Doria’s voice: “The last five years have been challenging. I’m ready to have my voice heard, that’s for sure. A little bit of my experience as her mom.”

When Meghan told her about Harry: “When she told me, we were on the phone and she says, ‘Mommy, I’m going out with Prince Harry,’ and I started whispering, ‘Oh my god!’ She says, ‘You can’t tell anyone.’ So from the beginning, it was very sort of, ‘Oh my god, nobody can know.’

Doria’s first impression of Harry: “He was just like, [this] 6ft 1, handsome man with red hair. Really great manners. He was just really nice. And they looked really happy together. Yeah, like he was the one.”

Raising Meghan after her divorce from Thomas Markle: “We were close to my mom, her grandma. My sister was close by, and my girlfriends were close by. So we had a nice network of women who helped me raise Meg… I remember asking Meg did I feel like her mom, and she told me that I felt like her older, controlling sister. I never forgot that.”

The novelty of her daughter’s relationship: “Once it was announced that they were together, it seemed like a novelty.”

She was harassed too: Doria revealed that she was being “stalked” by paparazzi when Meghan and Harry first got together. “I felt unsafe a lot. I can’t just go walk my dogs, I can’t just go to work. There was always someone there waiting for me, following me to work. I was being stalked by the paparazzi. Once I pulled over and so [the paparazzi] pulled next to me and said, ‘You know, I’m just trying to get a story. You can get a lot of money for this,’ and I just looked at him and said: ‘This is my child. I have nothing to say.’”

[From Yahoo & Hello]

Doria’s silence over the last five years has been pretty epic, and I cannot even imagine the strength of character it took for Doria to do what Meghan asked and not speak publicly, all while her daughter was being smeared, harassed and threatened. Doria has been the strength behind the scenes, and that’s amazing for Meghan and Harry.

Photos courtesy of Netflix, Avalon Red.