> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.richmonder.org/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Prince Harry's 'MasterClass' will benefit Richmond charity - URL: https://www.richmonder.org/prince-harrys-masterclass-will-benefit-richmond-charity/ - Published: 2026-10-29T01:25:02.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-29T01:25:02.000Z - Description: In the class, Harry recounts his childhood and how he was affected by the loss of Diana. - Author: Ben Cates - Tags: Local News, #lead The email invitation was unclear, like it could be spam or some sort of trick. Jamie Hughes, marketing manager at Comfort Zone Camp, decided to reply anyway. What followed was a surprise in the form of royalty. The email was from San Francisco-based MasterClass, an educational streaming platform that offers subscribers access to classes taught by celebrities and industry professionals. MasterClass was producing a video focusing on grief. “Very vague,” Jamie Hughes said of that initial email. “Also \[it looked like\] one of those emails trying to scam you.” Hughes and her mother, [Comfort Zone Camp](https://comfortzonecamp.org/) founder and CEO Lynne Hughes, hopped on what they deemed an “exploratory” phone call to find out more. That conversation led to a partnership between MasterClass and Comfort Zone, a Richmond-based nonprofit that helps children and young adults deal with and overcome grief. The result is a [1 hour, 39-minute video](https://www.masterclass.com/classes/redefining-grief) released earlier this month entitled “Redefining Grief: Building Resilience Through Loss.” It is broken up into 20 lessons and features Prince Harry, of the British royal family. Harry — who was 12 years old when his mother, Princess Diana, died in 1997 from injuries sustained in a car crash — wanted to support two nonprofit organizations focused on helping children deal with loss, in addition to sharing his experiences via MasterClass. Comfort Zone was selected as the U.S.-based nonprofit; the other, Scotty’s Little Soldiers, is based in the United Kingdom. “Prince Harry’s people vetted and selected us,” Jamie Hughes said, “which was definitely a high compliment, for sure.” In the class, Harry recounts his childhood and how he was affected by the loss of Diana. “I couldn’t remember my mom’s love,” he said. “Couldn’t remember what she looked like. I felt like I had to be sad in order to prove to her that I missed her.” Then he adds: “I consider myself a student of grief.” The class is co-led by Mary-Frances O’Connor, an Arizona-based neuroscientist and psychologist. “Your brain doesn’t register your loved one as gone,” she said during one session. “It registers them as lost. And it will keep searching until you teach it otherwise.” Lynne Hughes began Comfort Zone Camp in 1998, in part because she felt there weren’t enough resources readily available for grieving kids. She grew up in Michigan, and her mother died when she was nine. Two-and-a-half years later, when Hughes was 12, her father died. “You were doing really well if you acted like it didn’t happen,” she said of her experience. In 2001, Comfort Zone appeared in People magazine. There was a three-page spread of Hughes and her organization, then in its infancy. The next month, Hughes took her camps to New York and New Jersey to help children affected by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. That trip, Hughes recalled, changed the trajectory of Comfort Zone, which now operates more than 30 camps per year across 12 states and has reached an estimated 27,000 children and young adults dealing with grief. There’s a current connection to that 2001 People article. On the cover, dressed in a red polo and white chinos tucked into knee-high boots, is Prince Harry. He looks off into the distance as he walks alongside his brother William. The teaser headline reads, “Boys To Men,” with an additional blurb about how the boys are growing up and sharing “a love of sports, adventure and fun-loving blondes.” There’s no mention there of the grief Harry may have been dealing with. “I had spent so long emotionally numb, to a large extent because nobody told me joy was still around,” Harry says during one of the MasterClass lessons. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/99/06/99067822-fdfd-42b1-ab19-555c33eefb89/content/images/2026/10/Screenshot-2026-10-28-at-3.25.05---PM-1.png) Lynne Hughes wants kids who attend Comfort Zone camps — a total of seven took place this year inside Greater Richmond — to find joy despite losses, many of which are life-defining. In September, she traveled to Michigan for one of the organization’s camps and met a 16-year-old boy whose father had died by suicide. The teenager had two younger siblings. He was athletic — a Division I baseball recruit, Hughes said, with ambition to play at Texas A&M — and outgoing, too; at one point, he was seen teaching kids how to line dance. But when it came time to tell the group about his experiences with death, he was hesitant. Other kids began to talk. Slowly, the teenager opened up. Like many experiences shared that day, his story was complicated and messy, knotted with a wide range of emotions, laced with heartbreak. No one, he said, had ever asked him to share his story before. It amounted to a poignant moment — Comfort Zone doesn’t allow cell phones or TVs at its weekend camps, which are free for grieving children and young adults, so there are few outside distractions. “You’re just totally focused on what’s happening inside the bubble,” Lynne Hughes said. “And it’s about lifting these kids up and putting a smile on their faces and giving them the tools to navigate their grief journey outside of camp, and the opportunity to tell their stories.” Often, as was the case in Michigan, sharing becomes contagious among members of the group. “When someone puts their ugly out there, it makes it OK for the next person to put their ugly out there,” Hughes said. The MasterClass series represents more of a media-focused way for Comfort Zone to reach those grieving loss. Additionally, Comfort Zone has expanded its social media reach, with the goal of helping people find the resources they need. It’s one section of the organization’s overall goal to double in size in the coming years. In conjunction with the class, Comfort Zone [rolled out on TikTok](https://www.tiktok.com/@comfortzonecamp%5F) several posts interviewing Richmond-based young people dealing with loss. “Every experience with grief is unique,” a teenage boy says. A teenage girl recounts losing a close loved one and says, “They would tell me stories and they’d start crying, but no one really asked me how I felt.” The video is captioned: “When grieving kids feel heard the weight can start to feel lighter.” In the initial meeting with MasterClass, Lynne and Jamie Hughes heard about how the organization uses well-known figures in its courses. “This could be something really big,” Jamie Hughes said at the time. Once she found out Prince Harry was teaching the class, Lynne Hughes thought about that People magazine cover. “We were meant to be connected to him,” she said with a smile. The class explores grief from various angles, including how the grieving process affects one’s body, how to deal with particularly difficult moments and rebuilding one’s life after loss. MasterClass offers more than 200 online courses, with subscription plans that begin at $10 a month. Being involved with the project, Lynne Hughes said, “is humbling, to say the least.”