Breaking: Kate Middleton “Is Not Back to Normal” Yet Amid Her Cancer Recovery….See More

Kate Middleton may be slowly returning to the spotlight amid her cancer recovery, but that doesn’t mean she’s back to her old self again quite yet. According to a family friend, the Princess of Wales “is not back to normal” as she continues to navigate her return to public duty.

You can’t go through something like that and come out the other side unchanged,” one source said of the princess. “She is a different person now.”

“We are being encouraged not to look at this as a chapter that’s over and then it’s back to normal, because cancer doesn’t work like that,” says Robert Hardman, author of The Making of a King: Charles III and the Modern Monarchy, per People. He continued, “The details remain private, but there’s no sense of trying to gloss over the reality that it’s an unpredictable disease.”

Hardman’s sentiment is one Princess Kate’s inner circle agrees with, as the aforementioned family friend cautioned that while she’s “not back to normal,” there’s a “light at the end of the tunnel.”

Meanwhile, a second source added, “She has to get back on top of it. And she will if she is left alone to work it out for herself.”

While Middleton isn’t rushing back to her previously-packed schedule, she’s made a handful royal appearances since completing chemotherapy this fall—however, engagements for 2025 will be taken cautiously and in line with medical advice from her team of doctors. “She will probably continue to be strategic about how often she appears in public, and people shouldn’t hold it against her if she is doing less next year,” says royal biographer Sally Bedell Smith. “The important thing is she will be pacing herself. She will do what she’s able to do and pursue things she feels passionate about.”

Queen Elizabeth’s former press secretary Ailsa Anderson noted, “She is a member of the royal family but also a wife, mother and daughter. Don’t expect too much—she’s a person going through something horrific.”

Middleton is set to cap off 2024 with Christmas at Sandringham alongside her husband, Prince William, and the couple’s three children—Prince George, Princess Charlotte, and Prince Louis. There, they’ll participate in the royal family’s holiday traditions, which hopefully include the traditional walkabout to and from church.