Prince Harry Discusses Coping With Grief After Loss Of His Mother

Prince Harry recently opened up about his experiences with grief and loss of a loved one during an emotional conversation with war widow Nikki Scott.

Sharing his experience of having lost his mom, Princess Diana, at age 12, Harry said, “Things become easier” if children can talk about it.

Scott founded Scotty’s Little Soldiers, a charity organization that deals with bereaved military children.

Prince Harry has been very open over the years about dealing with the loss of his mother, Princess Diana.

During a heart-wrenching conversation with Scott, a war widow, the Duke of Sussex recounted the emotional toll dealing with grief took on him, noting that talking about it makes it “easier” as time passes.

Harry and his brother Prince William were handed a terrible blow as children when their late mother died in an auto crash in August 1997 at the age of 36 in Paris.

For the former senior royal, who was only 12 years old at the time, coming to terms with such an experience “becomes easier” if children can talk about grief.

“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,” Harry said in the video posted on YouTube. “But then there’s this realization of, ‘no, they must want me to be happy.'”

Scott, on her part, shared how difficult it was for her to break the news of the death of her husband, Corporal Lee Scott, to their 5-year-old son.

The corporal had died in Afghanistan while on duty, and she later broke the sad news to their young son in July 2009 while having to care for her 7-month-old daughter.

“It was the worst,” she told Harry. “How do you tell a five-year-old this? I took him up and sat him on the bed, and I said, ‘Kai, do you remember where Daddy was?’ and he said, ‘Yeah, Afghan,’ and I said, ‘Something really bad has happened, and the baddies (because he used to play Army) have hurt dad, and he’s died.'”

Weighing in on her experience, Harry stressed the importance of allowing kids to speak freely about their emotions, especially when grieving.

“That’s the hardest thing, especially for kids, I think, which is, ‘I don’t want to talk about it because it will make me sad,’ but once realizing if I do talk about it, and I’m celebrating their life, then actually, things become easier as opposed to this, ‘I am just not going to talk about it, and that’s the best form of coping,’ when in fact it’s not,'” he said.

“It can be for a period of time. If you suppress this for too long, you cannot suppress it forever; it is not sustainable, and it will eat away at you inside,” the duke added, per the New York Post.

Diana passed away due to the extensive injuries she sustained in a high-speed motor crash while in a Paris tunnel on August 31, 1997.

According to People magazine, the car, which was moving at about 120 mph in an attempt to shake off paparazzi, crashed into a pillar in an underpass.

The princess was reportedly still alive at the time of the crash. She was taken to Pitié Salpêtrière Hospital, where she eventually succumbed to the crash’s impact.

Her partner, Dodi Al Fayed, and the driver of the car, Henri Paul, who was later found to have been inebriated, also lost their lives along with Diana.

There was only one survivor of the crash, Fayed’s bodyguard, Trevor Rees Jones, who was in a coma for about ten days.

Given the Sussexes’ current relationship with the royal family, Harry and his wife, Meghan Markle, are said to be considering extending an olive branch to his sister-in-law, Kate Middleton.

A source who spoke to OK! Magazine said that the couple wants to reconnect with the Princess of Wales as she recovers from her health issues and progressively returns to public duties.

“Meghan’s desperate to come across as the bigger person and end this feud between them — appearing like some sort of royal savior could only do her image good,” the source shared. “When Kate gets back into action, their hope is that it might take some of the heat off them and possibly trigger a truce with her and William, and with the king, too.”

Royal expert Richard Eden shared that their reconciliation effort may not result in something worthwhile as they are “running out of time.”

In a recent appearance on the Daily Mail‘s “Palace Confidential” show, Eden said that Harry and Meghan are “running out of time” to rejoin the royal family as working members, four years after resigning from their roles to go live abroad.

While claiming that the Sussexes are now “irrelevant” to the other royal members and that they’re “not wanted” by the royal family, Eden weighed in on Harry’s chances, saying, “Time is running out to come back while his father is still King.”

“If Harry wants to come back at any stage, he needs to do it while his father is still King,” the Diary editor continued, adding that he “can’t see” Prince William “letting Harry come back and have a role again.”