James Middleton has opened up about supporting his sister Catherine, Princess of Wales during her “challenging” cancer battle.
The entrepreneur and author made rare public comments about his older sister and her cancer diagnosis during an interview with The Times on Monday.
“What I think is that, as a family, you learn to see and process and understand things. For her and her family it was a challenging time, and I know for us and our bigger family it was a challenging time, but I think it’s about communication and it’s about offering support and help where you can,” he shared.
“Being there for someone is such an important part, and it doesn’t necessarily have to be on your terms and it shouldn’t be on your terms. It should be on their terms; unconditional: ‘I’m not doing it for something in return. I’m doing it because I love you.’ And that’s the simplest way of really demonstrating love. You can do it in all these various fancy ways but actually, you know, it is just generally being there.”
Catherine, 43, announced in March 2024 that she had been diagnosed with cancer and was undergoing chemotherapy. She completed her treatments in September and announced her cancer was in remission in January this year.
James, 38, noted that Catherine and their sister Pippa offered him support and even went to a couple of therapy sessions with him when he was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder and depression after experiencing suicidal thoughts in late 2017.
“Having others surrounding you and the support that I had from them was so incredible,” he praised. “I will be forever thankful for that because they didn’t give up. They didn’t just say, ‘Fine, be like that.’ And it was a very difficult time, but I think it also did bring us closer as a family because we recognised the vulnerabilities that we all face.”
