“I never thought that this would be easy, but I thought it would be fair and that's the part that's really hard to reconcile,” she said.

The new mom added that when her romance with Harry, 35, began, some of her pals warned her about how her world would change once she became a royal.

“It's hard. I don't think anybody can understand that. In all fairness, I had no idea, which probably sounds difficult to understand, but when I first met Harry, my friends were so excited, my US friends were happy because I was happy,” Meghan said. “But my British friends, they were sure he was lovely, but they said I shouldn't do it because ‘the British tabloids will destroy your life.’ Because I'm American I very naively didn't get it. It's complicated.”

Meghan admitted that while she’s done her best to mold herself into the family and turn a blind eye to the negative media attention she’s received, it all has proven too difficult.

“I've said for a long time to H — that's what I call him — it is not enough to just survive something. That's not the point of life. You've got to thrive and feel happy,” she said. “I really tried to adopt this British sensibility of a stiff upper lip. I tried, I really tried. But I think what that does internally is probably really damaging.”

Though she and Harry have taken the high road against bullying, Meghan said the are both greatly affected by the animosity.

“When people are saying things that are just untrue, and they are being told they are untrue but they are allowed to still say them, I don't know anybody in the world who would feel that's OK and that is different from just scrutiny,” she said. “I think the grass is always greener. You have no idea. It is really hard to understand what it's like. The good thing is that I have got my baby and I have got my husband and they are the best.”