“I Claim My Mistakes As My Own,” She Says
Life tends to get really, really weird when you’ve been through and seen some of the things Frances Bean Cobain has. For years she’s made us wonder how she managed to turn out so self assured and well adjusted amid the chaos of growing up the only child of Hole singer Courtney Love and late Nirvana singer Kurt Cobain, who took his own life in 1994 at the age of 27. Turns out, Frances is just like the rest of us – trying like hell to make it through the muck and mire without completely losing it or herself, bravely sharing for the first time her most recent battle: sobriety.
Cobain quietly took to Instagram yesterday from Oahu where she’s presently on vacation to announce that she’s officially been sober for two years now, something that wasn’t “really public knowledge, decidedly and deliberately” but that she felt was important enough “to put aside my fear about being judged or misunderstood or typecast as one specific thing”:
https://www.instagram.com/p/BfJMmZ-DSUm/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=embed_ufi_test
Frances Bean’s revelation is a first for the 25 year old model, artist and occasional film producer. While she didn’t specify exactly what her addiction struggles entailed, that’s of no consequence; her lengthy Instagram post recognizes the day to day struggles that people go through when it comes to “all the painful, bazaar [sic], uncomfortable, tragic, f—– up things” going on in the world and within their personal lives, and understands the desire to lean on self destructive, toxic behavior instead as something she knows all too well.
However, Cobain is deeply hopeful and committed to her evolution – and yours, too.
“The moment evolution ceases is the moment I disservice myself and ultimately those I love. As cheesy and cornball as it sounds, life does get better, if you want it to.”
At the end of the day, Frances Bean Cobain’s full bodied confession serves two purposes: to own the mistakes that she’s made, and to hopefully help someone that may be reading her post and struggling with demons of their own. She closes her lengthy piece with, “I’ll never claim I know something other people don’t. I only know what works for me and seeing to escape my life no longer works for me. Peace, love, empathy (I’m going to reclaim this phrase and redefine it as something that’s filled with hope and goodness and health, because I want to).”
Beautifully said, and pretty damned brave.