Meghan Markle has opened up about what life was really like when she and Prince Harry first stepped back from their royal roles — admitting they had “no plan” at all, other than to recover and rebuild.

Speaking at the Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Summit in Washington D.C., the Duchess of Sussex reflected on the period five years ago when she and Harry made their move to the U.S. She described it as “a very different situation” and suggested her only focus at the time was to “nest and heal” — a remark some have interpreted as a subtle nod to her departure from royal life.

“You know, Archie was so little, and I had just got pregnant with Lili around that same time,” Meghan told Fortune’s editor-in-chief Alyson Shontell. “So we were nesting — nesting and healing. And honestly, I didn’t have the bandwidth then to think about what the big-picture dream was. There was no plan. It was just, let’s get through these next couple of years, create community, which was always so important to both of us in our new environment.”

The Duchess said that in those early years, she spent most of her time “in Birkenstocks and sweats,” joking that she was “making a lot of jam” rather than planning her next big move.

Speaking about the origins of her lifestyle brand As Ever, Meghan shared that many people assumed she’d pursue fashion or beauty. “But those five years at home, I wasn’t running around wearing beautiful outfits,” she said. “I was probably in Birkenstocks and sweats like the rest of us, especially during Covid — or just barefoot at home — but I was making a lot of jam. So it ended up becoming the thing that really was my passion project.”

Her appearance at the summit came during a busy few weeks for the Duchess. Earlier this month, she travelled solo to Paris to attend the Balenciaga show on October 4, before joining Prince Harry in New York for a series of appearances.

Despite the packed schedule, Meghan revealed she made a 6,000-mile dash back home to California between Paris and New York — just to see her children, Prince Archie, six, and Princess Lilibet, four.

Ms. Shontell noted: “You’ve been to Europe, you were just in New York — congratulations, by the way, on your humanitarian award for your work with online safety — and you made it home for one day to see your kids.”

Meghan laughed, replying: “Because I had to! Everyone said, ‘Oh, you must have gone from Paris straight to New York,’ and I said, ‘No — I needed to see my babies.’ So I went back to California for a day and then continued on.”