Prince Harry says grief will ‘eat you up inside’ as he opens up on loss of mother Princess Diana

Prince Harry lost his mother, Princess Diana, when he was just 12-years-old

The Duke of Sussex has opened up about dealing with his mother’s death as he urged children not to “suppress” their emotions as he once did.

Prince Harry, 39, was just 12 when his mother, Princess Diana, died in a car crash in Paris.

During the 20th anniversary year of the death of the Princess of Wales, Harry opened up in a newspaper interview, saying he spent nearly 20 years “not thinking” about his mother’s death and eventually got help after two years of “total chaos”.

He has claimed there was a lack of family support after his mother’s tragic and sudden death in 1997, leaving him unable to open up.

Prince Harry told a group of bereaved children that they should not suppress their grief forever as it would eventually “eat away” at them, as he spoke about his own personal experiences.

Prince Harry has admitted that he only cried once after his mother’s death – at her burial. (AFP via Getty Images)

“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 said.

The duke met the youngsters during his brief UK visit in May and, in a new video released in lead-up to Armed Forces Day on Saturday, he is seen discussing coping with loss with Nikki Scott, founder of Armed Forces charity Scotty’s Little Soldiers.

He told Mrs Scott that the hardest thing for bereaved children is a mindset of: “I don’t want to talk about it because it makes me sad”.

He said: “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.

He added: “But that’s what I was saying to (the children), if you suppress this for too long, you can’t suppress it forever, it’s not sustainable and it will eat away at you inside.”

In an interview in January 2023 ahead of the publication of his memoir, Spare, Harry admitted that he only cried once following Diana’s tragic passing – at her burial.

He revealed in a 2017 interview that he had “shut down all his emotions” and said that he only began to address his grief when he was 28 as he sought therapy.

Prince Harry has opened up about pain of losing his mother Diana (Scotty’s Little Soldiers)

Harry joined 50 children for a session of activities hosted by Scotty’s in May, and spoke to the charity boss about his pep talk about coping with grief.

The prince is Scotty’s global ambassador and a long-time supporter of the charity, which helps children who have experienced the death of a parent who served in the British Armed Forces.

Mrs Scott, the charity’s founder and mother-of-two, recounted the moment she was told in July 2009 that her husband Corporal Lee Scott, who served with the 2nd Royal Tank Regiment, had been killed in Afghanistan.

She described to Harry how she broke the news to her then five-year-old son, Kai, while also caring for their seven-month-old daughter, Brooke: “It was the worst. 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 have hurt dad and he’s died’.”

The year after her husband’s death, Mrs Scott set up her charity which today provides more than 680 children and young people with one-to-one bereavement support, respite breaks with their families, the opportunity to meet and bond with other bereaved children or take part in extracurricular activities.

She was praised by the duke who said: “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.”