Prince Harry Shares Emotional Take on Loss and Childhood

Prince Harry has spoken candidly about coping with loss and grief in childhood as part of an emotional new interview with a charity boss supporting bereaved military children.

In 2023, the prince became the global ambassador of the Scotty's Little Soldiers charity as part of his ongoing interest and commitment to supporting veterans and military communities.

In a video released on Wednesday, Harry sat down with charity founder Nikki Scott, a widowed mother of two whose husband Lee Scott was killed in Afghanistan in 2009 during a tour of duty as a corporal in the 2nd Royal Tank Regiment of the British Army.

In discussing the foundation of the Scotty's Little Soldiers charity as a way of supporting children and young people who experience the death of a parent or loved one during active duty, Harry opened up about his own experiences with childhood grief, having lost his mother, Princess Diana, in 1997 when he was just 12 years old.

"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," he said of the mental health impact of processing grief at a young age. But then there's this realization of, no they must want me to be happy."

Speaking to the prince, Scott said that one of the key factors in processing parental loss is learning to celebrate their lives while also grieving, something Harry said resonated with him.

"That's the hardest thing, especially for kids, I think," he said. "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 sort of, like 'no I'm just not going to talk about it and that's the best form of coping' when in fact it's not. It can be for a period of time, but that's what I was saying...if you suppress this for too long, you can't suppress this forever. It's not sustainable and it will eat away at you inside."

Harry has spoken in detail about how the death of his mother at such a young age had a significant impact on his mental health and relationships growing up, increasingly discussing the subject since his split from the monarchy with wife, Meghan Markle, in 2020.

In his 2023 memoir, Spare, Harry not only recounted in raw detail the hours and days that followed King Charles breaking the news to him that his mother had died from injuries sustained in a car crash in Paris, but also the mental anguish he suffered over the following years as he at first denied and then came to terms with her loss.

A key element in finally processing his loss was going to therapy with the encouragement of Meghan. Since then, the couple have placed mental health support for children, veterans and minorities at the forefront of the philanthropic work they do with their Archewell Foundation.

Harry also continues to head the Invictus Games, a sports global tournament which provides wounded, sick and injured military veterans with a platform to demonstrate their mental and physical rehabilitation.

Newsweek approached representatives of Prince Harry via email for comment.

James Crawford-Smith is Newsweek's royal reporter, based in London. You can find him on X (formerly Twitter) at @jrcrawfordsmith and read his stories on Newsweek's The Royals Facebook page.

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