Within 2 or 3 days of moving to Canada with Meghan and baby Archie in late 2019, Prince Harry says his body gave out in a way he’d never felt before. “I experienced this adrenaline crash,” he says. “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. I actually slipped into depression for about two weeks and I felt like I couldn’t function without adrenaline.”
Harry, 42, shares the account in his new MasterClass, Redefining Grief: Building Resilience Through Loss, which launched October 8 alongside Dr. Mary-Frances O’Connor, a grief neuroscientist. “I consider myself a student of grief,” he says.
The class keeps circling back to his mother, Princess Diana, who died in a Paris car crash in 1997 when he was 12. He says he didn’t cry when he was told she’d died, only at her burial, then not again for nearly two decades. “I’d spent so long emotionally numb, to a large extent, because nobody told me joy was still allowed.”
He describes going to war twice in his twenties thinking he could outrun his grief, panic attacks before public appearances, and guilt as the years passed. “I felt like I had to be sad in order to prove to her that I missed her.”
What turned it, he says, is his family. “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.”
Harry, Meghan and their two children now live in the UK, having flown in from California in August. Meghan was seen in London this week meeting education campaigner Malala Yousafzai.
