‘Can’t function normally’: Princess Kate speaks candidly about her cancer journey
In an emotional reveal, Princess Kate has spoken candidly about the dark depths of her cancer journey for the very first time.
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For a woman who looked like the heaviest thing she ever picked up was a partridge fork, Queen Elizabeth really knew her way around a shovel, planting more than 1,500 trees in her lifetime.
She certainly never once knelt in a flower bed, dug her hands into the soil and had a bloody good time doing it. And she certainly never sat in a circle of strangers and bared her soul, talking about how couldn’t “function normally”.
However, this is exactly what the next Queen has just done, with Kate, The Princess of Wales giving the rawest and most emotional account ever of her cancer battle yet (and joyfully getting covered in soil).
On Wednesday, the princess visited a Colchester hospital cancer centre where, clutching a mug of tea (joking, “as a parent you know you’ll keep losing your cup of tea”) she sat down with a group of patients and volunteers centre and opened up in a way that the world has never seen before.
As cameras nearby rolled, stereotypical, traditional royal reserve was replaced with a very human and very frank princess who went on the record about the “rollercoaster” of events since being diagnosed with cancer in early 2024.
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“[It] is a very scary journey”, she said. “It is a life-changing experience … Both for the patient but also for the families as well.”
The mother-of-three admitted, “you have to find your new normal and that takes time … and it’s a rollercoaster … you go through hard times.”
The princess revealed how she had continued to struggle even after finishing treatment, saying “Everybody expects you to be better – go! But that’s not the case at all.”
“You put on a sort of brave face, stoicism through treatment. Treatment’s done, then it’s like ‘I can crack on, get back to normal’ but actually the phase afterwards is really difficult. You’re not able to function normally at home as you perhaps once used to.
“You have to find your new normal and that takes time.”
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Seen on the page, it’s hard to get across the realness and vulnerability of her words and videos show a clearly emotional Princess of Wales.
Later, outside interposing rain, per the Times, after kneeling in the dirt to plant a rose, Kate told waiting staff and patients braving the weather, “I’m just washing my hands – I’ll be back”, before returning to pose for selfies.
And while this visit might have featured many of the time honoured beats of royal engagements since the Queen Mother was still hard at it- a Windsor, a regional hospital, a commemorative shrub, a walkabout - this Kate visit is something totally apart and quite extraordinary.
Widely reported to an inherently shy person, talking about the “life-changing” experience of the last 18 months might not have been an easy one for the Princess of Wales.
“She has never found the public appearances, and the forensic attention and criticism that goes with them, at all easy to deal with,” a “well-connected source” recently told the Daily Beast’s Tom Sykes.
It is only now that the extent of her health fight has started coming to light.
Last week the Daily Mail reported that the princess “is fortunate” to have survived cancer, with “[some]one who knows her well” saying she had been “to hell and back”.
After pulling out of an appearance at Ascot less than hour before Kate, had been due to arrive, a “well-connected source” told the Daily Beast it had been “wake-up call, not a one-off.”
However clearly cancer has not just changed the 43-year-old but how the degree to which she is willing to be seen and to show her real self to the world. Heart, meet sleeve.
The ‘I’ key on her keyboard has never gotten a greater workout.
Ever since March 2024 when she sat on a garden bench surrounded by daffodils in Windsor to record a statement revealing she had cancer, the princess has skipped reserved, removed press releases to speak directly to the people.
In June last year she posed for a powerful portrait of herself under a willow and released a personal message and talked about having “good days and bad days” and “I am learning how to be patient, especially with uncertainty.”
Then in September, to announce she had finished her chemotherapy, she and Prince William and their three young children filmed a golden-hued, nearly three minute meditation on love, family and the healing power of nature.
“The last nine months have been incredibly tough for us as a family,” she said in the voiceover.
“Life as you know it can change in an instant”.
What they had been through had been “complex, scary and unpredictable”.
Come, January Kate revealed she was “in remission” and visited the hospital where she had had treatment, the Royal Marsden, talking about the cold of chemo and saying, “I really felt like I needed to get the sun. You need loads of water and loads of sunlight.”
Can you imagine, for a heartbeat, King Charles who also has cancer offering anything so frank and real?
William has undergone this same shift towards openness, saying in an interview saying that 2024 had “probably the hardest year in my life” and that it had been “dreadful” and “brutal”.
There is a certain, rough symmetry here. Monday would have been Diana, Princess of Wales’ 64th birthday, and this is the version the royal family wanted so badly- one that could and would feel their feelings and offer a far more human face to the world.
There is another detail about Kate’s Wednesday outing that reflects the new ground that the Waleses are staking out for the monarchy: On her feet were a pair of everyday mum trainers.
Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.
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Originally published as ‘Can’t function normally’: Princess Kate speaks candidly about her cancer journey
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