Prince Harry and Robin Williams’ son Zak over are bonding over their “shared experience” of grieving a famous parent. Harry’s mental health docuseries started a new companion episode called “The Me You Can’t See: A Path Forward”. This discussion brought Harry and Oprah together again. Zak William was also expressed his feeling in this show. They discussed a wide-ranging topic on mental health.
Zak William’s father Robin Williams died in 2014 when he was only 31. Prince Harry asked Zak about losing a parent who was also a beloved entertainer. Zak said, “For my end, it was really hard to separate the initial process of privately grieving versus sharing the grieving with the general public, both the American public and the world.”
He also added, “I had trouble differentiating that grieving process at first. It was really challenging for me. I found myself really emotionally dysregulated, feeling vulnerable and exposed when I wasn’t ready to be vulnerable. That created a major challenge for me.”
Zak continued, “I didn’t recognize that I needed to grieve privately, and so I’m very thankful and appreciative that I did recognize how to set boundaries, I hope they’re health boundaries, around grieving personally versus grieving as a community, grieving with the public, grieving with the world. I needed that, and I didn’t pick up on that initially.”
Prince Harry’s mother Princess Diana died in 1997 when he was only 12. He can relate to that feeling. He expressed, “I think we have a lot of shared experience when you talk about that when you see so many people around the world grieving for someone they feel as though they knew them better than you did in a weird way because you’re unable to grieve yourself.” The Duke of Sussex also said. “How are you showing more, more sort of, how are you grieving more for someone who is my parent and I’m unable to grieve myself?”