Meghan Markle's dad gifted her 'customized' Christmas present that 'echoed' her reality

Meghan Markle has shared how her father, Thomas, gave her a 'customized' Christmas present when she was younger. 

• Meghan Markle has revealed that her father gave her a 'customized' Christmas gift when she was younger to help "echo" her reality. 
• The Duchess of Sussex shared the heartwarming memory in a self-written piece about her identity as a mixed-race woman for Elle magazine. 
• In other royal news, here's why the Queen's Christmas speech in 2021 could her most heartbreaking yet.
  

It's no secret that Meghan Markle has a strained relationship with her father, but it hasn't always been that way. 

In a resurfaced self-written piece for Elle, the former Suits star shared a heartwarming memory of her dad, Thomas Markle, trying to make Christmas special for her as a young child. 

The Duchess of Sussex described the cinematographer—with whom she is now estranged—in a notably positive light, detailing his creativity in gifting her a tailor-made present when she was just seven years old. 

"I had been fawning over a boxed set of Barbie dolls," she wrote. "It was called The Heart Family and included a mom doll, a dad doll, and two children. This perfect nuclear family was only sold in sets of white dolls or black dolls." 

As the child of a black mother and a white father, Meghan had longed to play with toys that reflected her own experience as a mixed-race person. Knowing well how much this meant to his beloved daughter, Thomas decided to take matters into his own hands and rearrange the doll boxes. 

"On Christmas morning, swathed in glitter-flecked wrapping paper, there I found my Heart Family: a black mom doll, a white dad doll, and a child in each color. My dad had taken the sets apart and customized my family," she recalled. 

“I picture him standing there in Toys R Us, mums glaring at him for taking the toys apart, perhaps an employee saying 'Excuse me sir, you can’t do that'—as my dad carefully separated the boxed sets to make one that echoed my reality," she wrote in  another post. 

Unfortunately, it looks unlikely that Meghan and her father will be exchanging gifts this Christmas. The Duchess has not been in contact with Thomas since before her 2018 wedding to Prince Harry, having reportedly fallen out with him over his alleged liaisons with the tabloids about her private life.