While Harry and Meghan might spend most of their time in Australia visiting hospitals and homeless shelters as well as addressing mental health summits and veterans and their families, Meghan’s final outing, the two day Her Best Life retreat, will only really be available to the rich and the influencer.

I well understand why any such event can’t be $300 a ticket but after the dust has settled next week I wonder just how many could afford the VIP experience, just upward of $3000 instead.

The facilitation of the retreat is through the entity set up by best friends Gemma O’Neill and Jackie Henderson, aka Jackie O (pictured main). It appears that is was almost gifted to Gemma through a friend of her and Meghan, Markus Anderson. Had this all come together two months ago the chat session with Meghan would have been hosted by Jackie and merely merited some coverage on social pages during and after.

But everything changed on February 20.

In the weeks, now months, since then the only comments Jackie has made are through her lawyers or Gemma, who also acted as her manager. Jackie also stopped her involvement in the Her Best Life podcast she did with Gemma at the start of this year too, so there was no public chat there on the fall out with Kyle Sandilands, or anywhere.

Gemma, who decided to continue the podcast solo, has demonstrated to me and to many women watching on since then what it means to truly be an ally and best friend.

I watched several of the Her Best Life episodes since that day, honestly to see what information might be gleaned about the situation. Gemma acknowledged Jackie each time, said that Jackie always listened and, most importantly, engaged with the podcast community. She spoke mindfully, as if her friend was actually sitting in the seat beside her.

Jackie likes all the podcast episodes and made the only public comment I’ve seen, above, on the announcement on the Meghan retreat, supported her friend too.

I might suggest that the assertations in Jackie’s court documents that ARN did not implement any control measures to minimise the risk of bullying and that she had received complaints from listeners about the “abusive relationship” taking place between she and Kyle, the listeners Jackie may have been referring to were responding to the Her Best Life podcast conversations. In gentler fashion than the MFW or KIIS socials. The message was received, and I think we can see, with hindsight, moments across the last 12 months where Jackie was changing and Kyle missed the signals.

As the date of the Her Best Life retreat drew closer, Gemma began retreating too.

Media outlets reported that administrators were pursuing her talent company, Gemmie Agency, which had gone into voluntary administration late last year with debts of more than $500K.

She removed herself from Instagram and, on April 1, announced a hiatus of the podcast saying:

‘I’m taking a break from the pod for now, but I’m already so excited to come back and continue growing this space with you all.

Thank you for being here, always.’

Gemma also revealed in that final podcast episode that she had suffered a miscarriage.

Jackie and Kyle are both fortunate to have networks of friends and family who are protecting them from media harm and guiding their words and actions in the legal battles ahead. We might scoff at the cost of a retreat with Meghan, but the events of that weekend will occur with Gemma protecting her friend first, not a princess.

Then, it’s back to court next week where preliminary hearings for Jackie and Kyle are set for the same day, Friday April 24, before Justice Angus Stewart.

Jackie may attend in person. If she does I know who will be at her side.

Jen Seyderhelm is a writer, editor and podcaster. You can contact her via [email protected]