Prince Harry and Meghan Markle just welcomed their first child, Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor, much to the delight of the royal family and fans around the world. However, there's one person that was not able to see the fervour around Archie's birth whom Prince Harry reportedly misses a great deal these days: his mother, Princess Diana, who died tragically in a car accident when Prince Harry was just 12.
On Thursday, Prince Harry travelled to the Netherlands in preparation for the Invictus Games, in which veterans of the armed services compete in various sports. Prince Harry created the games, the first of which took place in 2014.
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While in the Netherlands, Prince Harry reportedly spoke to Dennis van der Stroon, who is eligible to compete for the Netherlands' Invictus Games team. Per People, Prince Harry opened up to van der Stroon during their bike ride together about the loss of his mother, as van der Stroon had also lost his mom.
"I told Harry about my mother and we talked about our shared experience of missing a mom,” Dennis shared in an interview with People. "He said missing a mother is like missing some kind of security, how you need that as a son and it falls away when you lose your mother. He said he meets a lot of people in his work who have lost a mother, father, sister, brother or relatives and when he hears their story, as he heard my story, he said he doesn’t feel so alone."
It is not the first time Prince Harry discussed the loss of his mother. He previously opened up about struggling with grief at a Kensington Palace barbecue in 2016.
"When [my mother Diana] died, there was a gaping hole, not just for us but also for a huge amount of people across the world," Prince Harry said at the event. "It's okay to suffer as long as you talk about it. It's not weakness. Weakness is having a problem and not recognizing it."
Fortunately for Prince Harry, he has his ever-expanding family to lean on.