Prince Harry detailed how he often looks at an old portrait of his late mother, Princess Diana, and wonders what she’d think of his life today.
“I can actually get eye contact from her, and there’s a cheekiness in her smile… I just feel very connected to her,” the Duke of Sussex shared in a new MasterClass session about grief.
The portrait of Diana was taken by French photographer Patrick Demarchelier, and published in a Harper’s Bazaar December 1995 special issue.
“I find myself looking at her and wondering, ‘What is she thinking about what I am doing right now?’” Harry added.
The “Spare” author, 42, also said he sometimes looks at the picture of Diana “to see if the facial expression changes, but it never does.”
Harry was 12 years old when Diana was killed in a car crash in Paris in August 1997. She was 36.
Harry, who spoke to neuroscientist Dr. Mary-Frances O’Connor in the MasterClass session, recalled how he struggled to look at photos of Diana in the initial aftermath of her death.
“Even though I had photographs in my bedroom at school, I distinctly remember not thinking about my mother because thinking about something that sad was never gonna bring her back,” he explained.
Harry admitted he felt “emotionally numb” for years after Diana died, to the point where he “felt disloyal and guilty” over the possibility of being happy again.
“I felt like I had to be sad and I had to be emotionally numb in order to prove to her that I missed her,” he shared.
However, Harry said he eventually realized that his mom would want him to be happy, which was “a huge mental shift” for him.
“It freed me, and it gave me a whole different outlook on life,” he stated.
Harry — who recently moved back to the UK with his wife, Meghan Markle, and their two kids, despite their drama with Harry’s family — admitted he thinks about Diana “pretty much every night and most mornings,” and asks for her help during tough times.
“A lot has happened in my life in the last six years, and she has turned up at moments where it makes complete sense that she turned up in those moments,” he explained. “It just makes me laugh out loud sometimes because it’s like, this is not a coincidence. There is no version of where this is anything else but you.”
Harry added, “I feel it as an energy. And also it’s visual. It’s a sign. And it’s very much connected to her.”
Also during the session, Harry explained how joining the military at age 20 was the “perfect distraction” from grieving Diana’s death.
“For 15, 20 years, when I was being asked, ‘Are you OK?’ My response was, ‘I’m fine,’” Harry recalled. “It was numbness, emotional shutdown. And without knowing it, adrenaline was pushing me, was driving me.”
Harry expressed that his “post-traumatic stress was not tied” to his military tour in Afghanistan, but instead that experience “appeared to be a trigger for other traumas that had stored themselves within me.”
While he was promoting his memoir “Spare” in 2023, Harry admitted Diana would be “sad” about his falling out with his brother, Prince William.
“I think she’d be looking at it long term to know that there are certain things that we need to go through to be able to heal the relationship,” he told “Good Morning America”co-host Michael Strahan.
Harry also said he had “felt the presence of my mum more so in the last two years than I have in the last 30.”
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