Meghan Markle Proved the Importance of PTO AND Female Friendship With This Killer Vacay

Meghan Markle took a few days off from her royal responsibilities to spend three days with her best friend Jessica Mulroney in Toronto.

“Meghan spent three days holed up at Jessica Mulroney and her husband Ben’s home in Toronto,” ABC News royal contributor Omid Scobie reported, adding that Markle and Mulroney “spent their days catching up, cooking together and, of course, playing with Jessica’s children, who love their ‘Auntie Meg.’ ”

Markle and Mulroney go back years; they met when Markle first moved to Toronto in 2011 to film Suits. Today, Mulroney's seven-year-old twin boys, who served as page boys in the royal wedding, and her four-year-old daughter, who was a bridesmaid, love spending time with Markle. In fact, Mulroney has been the brains behind many of Markle's outfits, including her coat she wore during her engagement photocall in 2017.

Even royalty need time off every now and again. Unfortunately, the United States is the only developed country that does not legally require paid vacation days or holidays off. By law, every single country in the European Union, for example, has at least four weeks of paid time off, while a quarter of Americans aren’t afforded a single day. That said, most Americans don’t even take days off when they are offered. Fifty-two of Americans don't use all of their allotted vacation time, however. The average number of vacation days actually taken was just 17.2 in 2017, which leaves 705 million total unused vacation days annually. That leads to a potential economic impact of $225 billion, according to Project Time Off.

High stress, guilt and workload concerns are primarily keeping women from using their time off. Women report experiencing more stress than men at work, and are more likely to say that guilt and the mountain of work to which they’d return hold them back from vacationing. They also worry more than men about vacation making them seem less committed to their jobs.

But if the Duchess of Sussex can do it, women without royal duties can do it, too.

There are tons of reasons why taking time off is healthy both for you and your company. Taking time away to breathe and recharge makes you a more productive employee with a higher morale, and it can reignite your passions — especially when you take the time off from work to spend more time with your female friends who know exactly what you need and empower you, just as Markle did.

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