The Princess of Wales shared a touching moment with singer Jessie J as she and Prince William attended the Royal Variety Performance on Wednesday night. The Price Tag hitmaker, 37, who performed her new song, I'll Never Know Why, said she was prompted to give the royal a hug because of their shared experience of cancer.
Kate, 43, underwent six months of preventative chemotherapy last year and revealed in January that she is in remission from an undisclosed form of the disease.
Meanwhile, Jessie, whose real name is Jessica Cornish, faced her own cancer surgery in June with a mastectomy for breast cancer.
She later revealed she was due to undergo a second operation and had to postpone her autumn tour.
Jessie said: "Mum to mum, who has just recently gone through cancer, I just wanted to give her a hug. We acknowledged that it's something that is not easy to go through, especially in the public eye."
While Kate is mum to Prince George, 12, Princess Charlotte, ten, and Prince Louis, seven, Jessie shares a two-year-old son, Sky, with her partner and basketball player, Chanan Safir Colman.
After her first operation, Jessie said that she is "missing being an active mum". She added in an Instagram story: "But it's been nice to slow down and Sky is having a blast with Nanny and Grandad. It's still uncomfortable / a little painful but I can handle that. I'm doing my exercises and taking all the healthy things. I have been trying to eat super clean."
The London-born artist has battled with ill health throughout her life, having been diagnosed with a heart condition aged eight, suffering a minor stroke aged 18 and having briefly gone deaf in 2020, due to Ménière's disease.
Communicating with the kids
Meanwhile, Prince William recently opened up about the challenges of explaining Kate's cancer diagnosis and treatment to his three young children. In a recent interview with Brazilian TV show host, Luciano Huck, he said: "Every family has its own difficulties and its own challenges, and I think it's very individual as to how you deal with those problems.
"We choose to communicate a lot more with our children, that has its good things and its bad things, sometimes you feel you're oversharing with the children when you probably shouldn't.
"But most of the time hiding stuff from them doesn't work, and so explaining to them how they feel, why that's happening, giving them other viewpoints as to why they might be feeling the way like they are, sometimes helps give them a bigger picture and they can relax more into it, rather than being really anxious about what you're hiding from them.
"There can be a lot more questions than answers. It's always a balancing act, every parent knows that, it's about how much do I say? There's no manual for being a parent, you've just got to go with it, it's A bit of instinct."