Moving : Prince Harry and blocked grieving

I watched a video on Facebook last night that had me in tears, it involved Prince Harry talking about the loss of his Mum and how tough it was to watch and be subjected to what the media put he and his brother and mother through as youngsters and put his mother through in later years, leading to her death in that dark tunnel in Paris..

I will never forget the day that happened as my husband and I went on our annual holiday to Byron Bay and we heard the news when we turned up at the B and B we had chosen to stay in that night in late August. I identified a lot with Princess Di as she was born in 1961 and I am 1962, our astrology has similarities and a lot of differences.. But I could not help but see her role as an empath who suffered so much of her own emotional abandonment after watching this video and thought too, of how the pressure of the paparazzi did contribute to her death..

When you look at photos of Prince Harry in the following years you see how angry and sad he is, he shared about this period in the excerpts shown in the video, and how it all came to a head when he hit out at a photographer one night when he was a little drunk, but he also spoke about the impossibility of grieving and of being forced to walk with his brother William behind the horse drawn carriage that carried his mother’s body in that white flower covered coffin. In an interview in the video Elton John was also saying how painful this felt to him, to see the two boys subjected to his and not hugged or comforted in any way. I think he was only newly sober himself at that time.

Harry shares in the video how his grief was blocked for 28 years, that is very close to a complete Saturn cycle and it called to mind my own blocked grief not only from my father’s death but my sister’s aneurysm as well as the crash that derailed me for over 4 months at the age of 17. My grief stayed blocked from 1979 to 1999 which is when it really only just began to open up at around 6 years of active sobriety, but I would say it was not really until 2014 after my older sister died that it really all came out.. And blocked grief often made me keep a distance from my family and led me to spend Christmases alone as no one wanted to validate it (my father became very ill on Christmas eve following his recent cancer surgery and died on 8 January, 1985. In fact on one Christmas my second’s sister’s son went a bit psycho on her when she collapsed in bed after a frenzied lead up to that Christmas, she had had one suicide attempt and many hospitalisations for so called bi polar disorder prior to this.

In the light of what Princess Diana endued its only natural Harry wanted to seek distance and do all he could to protect his wife and young son, Archie.. I am sure they will all talk as a family and one day he can share that pain with his son, because the fact is just leaving often is not enough, we have to do the separation work and in some way try to stay connected if we can, but I do accept they may not be a possibility for many, being so tough to do and hard on the ones trying to give expression to what others may prefer was kept under wraps. My experience in my family was no one wanted to hear about the grief, they always tried to block it, one exception was my brother in law, the one that married my sister who is now so ill with anxiety and depression, he held me as a cried one year but in the end he left just as all the men who married us girls eventually left us due to our blocked grief.

It makes me sad writing this, but its important to acknowledge to myself why hearing Prince Harry share affected me.. I hope for a world in time where grief and loss are acknowledged and finally allowed a form of expression.. Grief can come out as anger if it is blocked and then the person expressing it will often be villified, just as I was in my family, or they will be medicated and labelled the diagnosed patient.. the roots of earlier griefs along the ancestral line may often lie hidden..

With Mars in Cancer now only 10 degrees out of its opposition to Pluto in Capricorn (the sign ruled by Saturn that relates to tradition, formality, the monarchy and forces of emotional repression.. the so called ‘stiff upper lip mentality’) it is interesting what is being shared by Prince Harry. Some of you may know that Princess Di had the Sun in Cancer and she was seen as ‘a kind of threat’ to the monarchy when she became public about her marriage split as well as the betrayal she endured at the hands of both Prince Charles and Camilla.. I do not totally blame Charles as he was a victim of his own conditioning and the absence of a loving maternal force that Diana seemed to embody as some kind of archetypal energy.. But sadly she met her death at the hands of a world often so caught up in sensationalism and emotional superficiality.

Possibly Princess Diana projected her own deep abandonment wound when helping so many others suffering, ill, sidelined or in distress, she sought to give the mothering and empathy to others that she lacked, like all of us empaths.. And Neptune is the esoteric ruler of Cancer (the Moon is its natural ruler) and this shows that it is through our own emotional struggles that we most powerfully develop compassion, insight and empathy unlike those who choose the easier less courageous ‘out’ of emotional defences, blaming, shaming and scapegoating of others..

With Neptune in Scorpio, Diana’s emotions ran deep and they were passed on to both sons.. I am just so glad that Harry is now speaking publically about what went on in those earlier years and how he felt, though I do feel sad for Prince William too, who may be more bound up in/or by royal protocol, or family repressions… both men deserve our compassion and understanding and they can be forces for change. By speaking about what they endured and how they struggle to manage in the aftermath we can all only become more aware and more understanding of everyone who goes through very, very challenging losses.