In a new Independent interview, Kurt Cobain’s mother Wendy O’Connor discussed fearing for Frances Bean Cobain’s life a few years ago when she was struggling with drug addiction.
Wendy admits it was hugely difficult to take a step back when Frances was going through her self-destructive phase, but says she had learned from her previous experiences with Kurt and Courtney.
“Absolutely I knew she would make it, but it was very hard not to over insert myself into the whole… when it was not good. That was the hardest part,” she says. “I knew that I had to do that, I had to step back and kind of let it run its course.”
She adds, “It was really hard for me because I can be really pushy. It was so hard for me to keep my peace and not start pounding on her, ‘this is what you have to do, this is what you have to do’. Everybody was mad at me because I wasn’t doing what they thought I should be doing. I said, ‘no, she will come to me. I know who’s inside.”
Frances did come to her. She says, “I think that she learned with Kurt and Courtney, when she tried to insert herself it made them isolate more and as a reaction of her not inserting herself and kind of letting me do my self-destructive thing and be an asshole she allowed me the room to come to her when I needed her and that means that I felt comfortable expressing what I had been through and what I was going through outside of that at that point. I’m really appreciative that she allowed me to heal myself first.”
