In the nearly 30 years since losing his mother, Princess Diana, in a car crash, Prince Harry has spent much of his life learning about grief. “I consider myself a student of grief,” he says.
Read more High school boys golf: 6A final region recaps, Farmington, Bingham, Lehi win region titles
With that experience, Prince Harry is now hosting a MasterClass on grief, titled “Redefining Grief: Building Resistance Through Loss.” He will lead the online counseling sessions alongside Mary-Frances O’Connor, a neuroscientist, psychologist and author who specializes in grief.
The MasterClass aims to “teach the tools to turn loss into growth and unlock the resilience that lives within each of us.” Across 20 sessions, Harry and O’Conner explore how to break old patterns, turn pain into purpose and find ways to build resilience through loss.
Harry was 12 years old when his mother, Diana, was killed in car crash is Paris in August 1997 — he says he spent the years that followed “suppressing grief.”
“In my 20s, I went to war twice thinking I could outrun my feelings, but that’s not what happened,” Harry said in the trailer for the class.
“I’d spent so long emotionally numb, to a large extent because nobody told me joy was still allowed, that it wasn’t betrayal,” he continued. “This class will hopefully give you that permission and the tools to access it. What you live through isn’t just something to survive, it’s the foundation of what comes next.”
After six years in the United States, Harry and his wife, Meghan, relocated their family to Britain in late August, with plans to spend “an extended period in the U.K. this autumn.”
The couple have maintained a low profile in the months since the move, making Harry’s MasterClass one of the first public indications of their plans after a period of setbacks surrounding their U.S. projects.
MasterClass reached out to Harry last year about developing a class centered on grief, reported People, and the series was filmed early this summer. Proceeds from the class will benefit two bereavement charities, Comfort Zone Camp and Scotty’s Little Soldiers, where Harry serves as global ambassador.
Harry’s MasterClass arrives at a moment when public interest in Diana has resurfaced following the release of a memoir, “Swan Song: Diana, My Sister,” by her brother, Charles Spencer. Harry is also currently in talks to make a documentary about Diana to mark the upcoming 30th anniversary of her death.
Here are some of the lessons on grief Harry shared during his MasterClass.
Harry ‘slipped into depression’ after leaving the U.K.
After temporarily relocating from Britain to Vancouver Island with Meghan and their son in 2019 on an extended holiday, Harry experienced an “adrenaline crash” that left him feeling depressed.
“Being in Canada, away from the stressful environment where presumably my body was just pumped full of adrenaline, within two or three days, I experienced this adrenaline crash, something that I’d never experienced before,” Harry said, per The Hollywood Reporter.
“It was as if I needed stress in order to get the adrenaline to make my brain function because I became useless around the house,” he continued. “I actually slipped into depression for about two weeks and I felt like I couldn’t function without adrenaline.”
Harry explained that for roughly two decades, he emotionally shut down and felt numb, surviving off adrenaline.
Following his extended stay in Canada, Harry and Meghan announced they would step away from their royal duties in early 2020.
He didn’t cry for decades
Harry said he did not cry when his father, King Charles III, told him his mother died.
“It took me a long time to find my path to resilience. I didn’t cry when I was told my mom died, only at her burial, and then not again for nearly two decades,” he said, per People. “I was convinced that was strength, but it wasn’t. I was a 12-year-old boy with no permission to fall apart and no road map for how to heal.”
Read more High school cross country: 2A region championships recap
He added that many men are encouraged to keep emotions buttoned up and view crying as a weakness. Harry pushed back on that idea. “You have to be able to cry,” he said, adding that suppressing his emotions had a negative impact on both his emotional and physical health.
After many years of “hiding his pain,” Harry finally let himself cry while looking at photos from his mother’s burial, telling the MasterClass that he had still been in disbelief that she had really died.
“I cracked to the point of where I cried, and I remember thinking or feeling that it actually felt really good to cry,” he said.
“Then years later, I was looking for proof because at the burial, I didn’t want to believe it. I didn’t believe that she was gone,” he continued. “I believed that she had created this exit to get away from all the things that were destroying her life and that she was going to reenter the fray in some disguise and then whisk me and my brother away.”
Royal engagements caused ‘panic’
Harry described how carrying out royal engagements often caused him severe anxiety and panic attacks.
“There was a time where public engagements just created absolute panic right from beginning to end,” he said, per People.
He described feeling anxiety over getting out of the car, facing cameras, not knowing what to say, or looking sweaty or disheveled in front of a crowd.
“I started to realize that I probably had become seriously depleted when just putting a simple dress shirt on — the tightening of the collar — literally felt like I was suffocating, and I would be experiencing panic attacks just in the car on the way to work,” he said.
“And that’s when I realized, ‘OK, there’s something bigger, there’s something else that you need to look into here.’”
Shouldering public grief
In the wake of his mother’s death, Harry said he and his brother, William, became “intermediaries” for the public’s grief over Diana.
“They were showing more emotion than we could,” Harry recalled, per The Hollywood Reporter. “It felt very, very strange for the hundreds of hands that we shook to be soaking wet with tears that they wiped away from their own faces.”
“I almost felt guilty that I was unable to show the same emotion as these people who were crying for someone they’d never even met.”
Finding joy
Harry said he has found joy through finding purpose in life, focusing on his family and children and doing work that aligns with his mother’s legacy, particularly through the Invictus Games, a competition for wounded soldiers.
“The biggest factor for me is the energy and the joy and happiness that I get being with my family, especially our kids, and the joy and happiness I get by being on the ground for my work,” he said.
“And the key to finding the joy and happiness balance is no more than 10 days away from my wife and kids. This is balancing my work and the purpose behind that as well as being a dad and a husband and the sort of multi-identity elements coming together,” he continued.
“Everything I do, everything I put my energy towards, I hope that my mother will be proud about it.”
Read more Mike Kennedy and Jonny Larsen disagree on Iran war and gas prices in Utah’s 4th District debate