Very touched by this article from The New York Times

[Return2thebasic]

Prince Harry and the Value of Silence
By Patti Davis
www.nytimes.com/2023/01/07/opinion/prince-harry-and-the-value-of-silence.html

Apparently, this author has also written an autobiography about his family. This article is what he felt wanting to say to Harry.

"My justification in writing a book I now wish I hadn’t written (and please, don’t go buy it; I’ve written many other books since) was very similar to what I understand to be Harry’s reasoning. I wanted to tell the truth, I wanted to set the record straight. Naïvely, I thought if I put my own feelings and my own truth out there for the world to read, my family might also come to understand me better."

"And in the ensuing years, I’ve learned something about truth: It’s way more complicated than it seems when we’re young. There isn’t just one truth, our truth — the other people who inhabit our story have their truths as well."

Prince William has, I’m sure, his own take on the physical fight that Harry has described. To really understand the dynamic between the brothers, to broaden the story and make it more complete, William’s truth has to be considered as well. Harry has written that, after William hit him, William told Harry to hit him back, which he declined to do. But by writing about the fight, he’s done exactly that.

" I’d have said, ‘Be quiet.’” Not forever. But until I could stand back and look at things through a wider lens. Until I understood that words have consequences, and they last a really long time."

"Silence gives you room, it gives you distance, and it lets you look at your experiences more completely, without the temptation to even the score."

I am NC with my family and have been for about a decade. It's the real deal, they don't know where I live, have never met my children etc.

Very very few people know anything about this other than what I've written above. My DH doesn't even know the 'full story', not because it's some big dark secret but because it's all very messy and complicated and frankly I don't really fancy rehashing the whole sorry saga. But also, I'm older now and a parent myself, and I acknowledge that my version of events and my feelings about them are mine and mine alone. The other people involved will have their versions of things and their own feelings about it all and I honestly don't feel that it's my place to go broadcasting things that don't concern anyone else.

Even though the royals are a public family and all that, I kind of feel that this applies here too. Most of what Harry has said simply didn't need to be public knowledge and I'm not actually sure that all of this is doing him any good anyway, both in terms of his reputation and his mental well being.

In my situation I never really wanted to put anything 'out there' that I couldn't take back. If we're lucky life is long and we may feel differently about things later on. There will be no reconciliation in my case, so that's not at risk but I feel like 'airing my dirty laundry' would be something that may have made me feel better a few years ago, but that I would regret now.

Probably doesn't make much sense, but I think he should have kept his dignity, kept his mouth shut, got some therapy and got on with living his best life. That's what I've done.

Couldn't agree more OP.

I remember the wisdom of realising that other people had their own version of truths which weren't completely incompatible with mine.

They had remembered things differently, had their own perspective, different interpretations of events.

I realised that it was impossible to ever really know you had the absolute truth because it could only be from your own perspective, excluding other people's world views.

The think I find weird is how many people fail to understand this. The sheer number of people willing to accept every single thing Harry says as 'THE truth' ... when its not, it can't be. Its Harry's view and Harry's interpretation, and in many cases Harry's suspicion....

www.forbes.com/sites/johnbaldoni/2023/01/09/patti-davis-what-silence-teaches-us/amp/

This is another one on Forbes, every word is golden. I wish I could be self disciplined enough to follow the wisdom words at time of distress in future, instead being blinded by the rage at that moment and by the sole voice inside my heated head.

*"Value and virtue

There is grace in silence. “When I am liberated by silence, when I am no longer involved in the measurement of life, but in the living of it, I can discover a form of prayer in which there is effectively no distraction. My whole life becomes a prayer. My whole silence is full of prayer. The world of silence in which I am immersed contributes to my prayer." Those are the words of the Trappist monk Thomas Merton"*

"In our world of "gotcha comments" – that permeate our social discourse – how refreshing it is to stand back and disengage. Some call this digital detoxification. Whatever you call it, silence, like patience, gives us a measure of self-discipline. We cannot control events, only how we react to them."

www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/johnbaldoni/2023/01/09/patti-davis-what-silence-teaches-us/amp/

Based on that article on The Telegraph, H is too ill to see it for many years to come, if he will ever.