Prince Harry has starred in a new video talking about grief, urging children and young people to talk about their emotions.
The royal, who was speaking in his role as a global ambassador for Scotty’s Little Soldiers, which supports youngsters who have lost parents in the military, shared his own insight after losing his mother, Diana, Princess of Wales, at just 12.
‘It’s so easy as a kid to think or convince yourself….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. But then there’s this realisation of, no, they must want me to be happy,’ he says.
Harry, 39, who has railed in recent years against what he claims was a lack of family support after his mother’s tragic death in 1997, which he believes led him to bottle up his emotions and, eventually, seek therapy, added:
‘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 realising that if I do talk about it, I’m celebrating their life, then actually, things become easier”…as opposed to this “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…you can’t suppress it for ever. It’s not sustainable. And will eat away at you inside.
‘No-one wants to in the position where they are forced to talk about the very thing they don’t want to talk about, especially when every defence mechanism in your mind, nervous system and everything else is saying “do not go there”.’
The emotionally charged video was made in May, when he last came to the UK, and sees the prince talk to Nikki Scott, founder of Scotty’s Little Soldiers, as she recounted the harrowing moment she had to tell her five-year-old son, Kai, that his father, Cpl Lee Scott, who served with the 2nd Royal Tank Regiment, had been killed in Afghanistan in 2009. She also had a seven-month-old daughter, Brooke, at the time.
It has been released by the charity in the lead-up to Armed Forces Day on Saturday to highlight the ongoing needs of bereaved military children in the UK.
Ms Scott’s personal tragedy inspired her to create Scotty’s Little Soldiers after seeing the positive impact a family holiday had on her son.
Expressing his admiration for her work, Prince Harry remarked: ‘What you’ve done is incredible.
‘It is truly inspirational. I’m really honoured and privileged to be part of Scotty’s now and I really look forward to us doing everything we can to bring in more people, more interest, raise more funds and be able to get the message out there to get more kids the support they so desperately need.’
Scotty’s Little Soldiers currently supports over 680 members and estimates that each year 2,100 children are newly bereaved of parent who served in the British Armed Forces.