My children were the same age as Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis when I was diagnosed with breast cancer – and the Princess of Wales’ incredibly intimate and honest home video takes me right back to how I felt at that time, ten years ago.
As the years have passed, the intensity of those feelings have faded, as I hope they will for Kate as her journey to health progresses.
But while her brave, honest, and unprecedented glimpse into the personal lives of her young family show how much love and laughter the Wales family have managed to fit into their summer in Norfolk, I know only too well that there will also have been a lot of fear, tears and difficult times. And it makes her decision to share her journey with the rest of the world all that more impressive.
When you receive a cancer diagnosis as the mother of young children, it changes everything in an instant.
I remember so clearly the school run, the day after my news. My two sons went to school in central London and mornings were a heady and stressful mess from the moment we woke up, through the bicker-filled commute on the tube, until I finally delivered them to school and took a relieved deep breath at having completed my daily grind.
Loving them of course, beyond anything else, but weighed down by the relentlessness of the daily morning routine and my kids’ ability to push my buttons every single morning.
The morning after my diagnosis it was like I’d been given technicolour glasses to see the world in a whole new light. I remember looking at my two beautiful boys, slumped on their seats on the District line tube, and feeling utterly besotted with them. How had I ever resented this time in the morning?
The privilege I had as their mother to comfort their tumbles, ease their worries, sneak an extra cuddle before I lost them to school for the day. It struck me that a stranger would look at these two little boys with empathy and delight, not judgement and irritation as I usually felt. I had it all, and I hadn’t even realised. They were perfect, they were mine, and I was going to do whatever I could to make sure I was there for them while they grew up.
When you’ve stood on the precipice of the black hole of your own mortality and glanced down, you are changed. It’s a mixture of emotions. Terror of course. Horror and fear – interestingly for me, it wasn’t myself I felt those emotions for, but the ones I would leave behind.
But you are given the gift of perspective.
And I can see from Kate’s video, that she feels the same. It’s not a gift you’d choose, of course. But the ability to shine a light on everything that truly matters in life (and to put everything else into the shadows) changes the way you see the world forever.
I watch William and Kate snuggle up like love-struck teenagers and I remember the bath my husband ran me the morning after my diagnosis. My husband is not a bath runner. I’m a very independent person and am quite capable of running my own baths, thank you.
But that was what made it so special. When the vows you made on your wedding day, in sickness and in health, are tested for the first time I imagine it can be make or break. I’m so lucky that my husband stepped up, and became the rock I could not have got through my own experience without.
The kisses and cuddles between William and Kate – such a stark contrast to the usual releases from official royal channels – show William has clearly been Kate’s rock too. And they want the world to know.
The profound impact this video has had on me has been unexpected though. In the course of a decade the strength of these emotions, the intensity of the fear and the power of my gift, have faded. This is largely a good thing – I live a normal life, unencumbered by constant medical checks and worries about the future.
But in sharing her moment with the rest of us, Kate has given me something to think about. The memory of bargaining with my doctor, explaining the absolute necessity of 15 years’ survival to get both boys through university, comes back to focus. I have five years left of that bargain and while these days I believe I have plenty of life left in me, living each day as if it could be your last is not a bad approach.
Both Kate and I had the luxury of being able to put all other things like work on hold. My career has always been a defining feature for me but in that instant of clarity, it mattered not one jot. As time passes and the old reality returns, this changes.
These days, my family time is endlessly eaten into by my passion for my work. Those lazy card games around the kitchen table and the joy of a summer picnic in Kate’s video, remind me to revisit my gift and take stock of my priorities.
And we must allow Kate the time to ease back into her royal responsibilities, on her own terms, as the intensity of her own emotions ease. She will find stability in a new normal, but it takes some time to get there.
I suppose Kate has done a lot of work on this over the past 9 months already. And likely there will be plenty more to come.
While I hope it’s not the case for Kate, she may find that the end of treatment marks a new emotional upheaval for her. It did for me, and I’m forever grateful for the ‘Moving On’ course that I was able to work through at the incredible charity, The Haven.
When my treatment was over, everyone I knew was ready for things to get back to normal for me – desperate for it to, and this came from a place of love.
But I felt nothing of the sort. I couldn’t see a path back to life as it had been. It felt unthinkable to me, my calendar punctuated with constant medical checkups, my daily showers an opportunity to obsess over every new lump or dimple on the body that had let me down.
The course I did was essentially one to understand happiness and acceptance, and learn how to achieve it, even if the odds feel stacked against you. It was powerful and formed the basis of my passion for the HELLO! to Happiness project we launched two years ago. Once learned, these skills are with you for life and I learned that if you go through the steps, commit to the process, you can move on, and put these bumps in the road behind you.
But what Kate’s video has reminded me is that I should work a little harder to keep some of those intense life lessons, learned a decade ago, with me in my daily life. Finding time for me, to make myself healthy, well and happy, is not selfish, I learned back then. It was critical, because those little boys needed me.
While they’re big leggy teenagers now, the same still stands. I’m going to my second gym class of the week tomorrow. And I’m going to take Friday off work to spend with my eldest who is about to go to university.
Thank you, Kate, for the reminder.