Prince Harry is opening up about the challenges of processing grief as a young child.
On Thursday, the Duke of Sussex sat down with Nikki Scott, the founder of Scotty’s Little Soldiers, to honor the UK’s Armed Forces Day. Nikki created the foundation in 2010 to help kids after her husband, Corporal Lee Scott, died while serving in Afghanistan as she was navigating the emotional loss with her own two young kids. Praising Nikki, Harry shared:
“What you’ve done is incredible. It is truly inspirational. I know that word gets thrown around a lot, but it is. And to see the difference in some of the kids there … you can see that they’re still processing their grief, but this community of support is everything. It’s amazing.”
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Both Harry and Nikki were practically in tears later when the founder recalled the moment she learned of her husband’s death in 2009. Her son Kai was 5 at the time and their daughter Brooke was just 7 months old. She expressed:
“It was the worst. How do you tell a 5-year-old this? Because I literally just shattered his world. … He knew that life was never ever going to be the same.”
She also noted that her first thoughts were about how many other children were experiencing a similar loss and grief, though she thought it was “so corny.” Harry insisted:
“There’s nothing corny about that.”
Continuing to reflect on the difficult day, Nikki said of her son:
“He’s autistic as well, so I knew I had to be really clear and not confuse him, but you also wanna protect your children.”
When Kai arrived home from school that day, just hours after the tragic news was delivered to her, she said he “knew” something was wrong and she told him about the death, adding, “It’s a conversation I will never forget.” The father of two praised the mother for doing “the best you could” in the moment.
Speaking from his own experience of losing his mom Princess Diana in 1997 when he was just 12, Harry said “the hardest thing” for children to do is be honest about their feelings, musing:
“[They think], ‘I don’t want to talk about it because it will make me sad.’ … If you suppress this for too long, you can’t suppress it forever, it is not sustainable and it will eat away at you inside.”
He also said of his thought process at the time:
“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’re missed, but then there’s this realization [of], ‘No, they must want me to be happy.’”
The Archewell founder — who previously revealed he was convinced his mother was secretly alive and would come back for him one day — also opened up about wanting to find all the “proof” about Diana’s death, something Nikki very much related to. She agreed:
“Back then, it was really important that I knew every single piece of the puzzle … I was like, ‘I need to know everything that happened.'”
It must be so, so hard to process such a sudden and unexpected loss, so we get the desire to want all the facts and evidence! But it’s incredible how Nikki has turned this deep despair into a powerful organization helping so many others! While it wasn’t easy, she told Harry that she ultimately realized her husband “didn’t die for nothing” and she was eager for her kids to understand that as well.
Near the end of the conversation, the 39-year-old Spare author said she was absolutely “making a difference” in the military community, adding:
“[Your husband] would be super proud of you.”
She concluded:
“I hope so.”
Wow. A very raw conversation about such a difficult but important topic, and certainly one that hits close to home for Harry. Hear it all (below):
Thoughts? Let us know (below).
[Image via Scotty’s TV/YouTube & Anwar Hussein/WENN]
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