“Grief eats you away”: Prince Harry's candid interview about losing his mother
Prince Harry has spoken candidly about his ongoing struggles with grief following the death of his mother, the late Princess Diana, when he was just 12 years old.
Upon his brief return to the UK, the Duke of Sussex opened up in a new interview as part of his role as global ambassador for Armed Forces charity Scotty’s Little Soldiers, who work to support children who have lost parents in the military, admitting that “grief eats you away”.
Harry detailed how difficult it was losing his mother at such a young age, admitting he spent nearly two decades “not thinking” about her death and was forced to eventually get help after years of “total chaos”.
He added that learning how to celebrate a late loved one is difficult for a child, as it made them “sad”.
“But realising if I do talk about it, and I’m celebrating their life, then things become easier,” he said.
Harry went on, “You convince yourself that the person you’ve lost wants you, or you need to be sad for as long as possible to prove to them that they are missed … Especially when every defence mechanism in your mind, nervous system and everything else is saying ‘do not go there.”
"But then there’s this realisation of, no, they must want me to be happy”.
The 39-year-old royal shared how, after decades of silent mourning, he learned suppressing grief was “in fact not” the best form of coping with loss.
“It can be for a period of time,” he went on to say.
“But…if you suppress this for too long, you can’t suppress it forever it’s not sustainable and it will east away at you inside."
“Once realising that if I do talk about it and I’m celebrating their life then actually things become easier.”
Image credits: YouTube