Peaches Geldof passed away suddenly at the age of 25 this week, leaving behind two small boys. The hipster icon had made a name for herself both as a wild child, and a style-setting writer before becoming a mother at 23 with second husband Tom Cohen. Her last bit of writing was a moving piece for a British parenting magazine called Mother & Baby.
“I lived a life of wanton wanderlust. With fun loving friends from Los Angeles to London, I was lost in a haze of youth and no responsibilities,” Peaches eloquently wrote of her former decadent lifestyle. “Other than work there was nothing stopping me from having constant fun. But it was becoming boring, I wanted an anchor – I craved it. And when I had two wailing, smiling, joyful little blobs of waddling pink flesh they became my entire existence and saved me from one of pure apathy.”
“Becoming a mother was like becoming me, finally,” she explain. “After years of struggling to know myself, feeling lost at sea, rudderless and troubled, having babies through which to correct the multiple mistakes of my own traumatic childhood was beyond healing. I felt finally anchored in a place, with lives that literally depend on me. I am not about to let them down, not for anyone or anything.”
Peaches, who is the daughter of Irish musician Bob Geldof, lost her own mother to a heroin overdose when she was 11. Much of the trauma from her own childhood that she referenced in the magazine came from dealing with her parents’ divorce, and her mother’s chaotic lifestyle and ultimate death. She’s said she did not even start to process the death of her mom until she was 16, and at that point she was already deep into the hard-partying international lifestyle that would leave her feeling apathetic and empty.
Last year, after the birth of her second son Phaedra, Peaches joked about upholding her family’s tradition of nontraditional name. “I wouldn’t be a Geldof if I didn’t get stick in the press about my ridiculous choice of names,” she told HELLO! magazine. “I’ve got to uphold the family tradition.” Peaches’ full name was Peaches Honeyblossom and her sisters are named Fifi Trixibelle, Pixie, and Heavenly Hiraani Tiger Lily Hutchence. Her oldest son, born April 2012, is named Astala Dylan Willow Geldof-Cohen, and her youngest’s full name is Phaedra Bloom Forever Geldof-Cohen.
