So many parallels with my mother – Peaches Geldof

WEEKS before her death, Peaches Geldof spoke of the hopes she had for her two young children, saying she was raising them in an atmosphere of “pure love”.

Peaches Geldof regularly posted family pictures to social media. Picture: Getty

In what was to be her last interview, the columnist and presenter said it was through being a mum that she had reconciled herself with her memories of her own mother, Paula Yates, who died in 2000 aged 41 from an accidental heroin overdose.

Mother-of-two Ms Geldof, 25, was found at her home in Wrotham, Kent last Monday. Her passing is being treated as a “non-suspicious, unexplained sudden death” by police.

A post-mortem examination proved inconclusive, prompting further investigations to try to establish a cause of death.

Any inquest is not expected to be opened and adjourned by the coroner until after the results of toxicology tests are known, and Ms Geldof’s body has been released to her family to arrange her funeral.

In an interview for Aga Living magazine, published in the Sunday Times, Ms Geldof said she felt her mother was “living through me all the time because we are just so similar”.

Explaining that being a mother to her two sons – Astala, 23 months, and 11-month-old Phaedra – had allowed her to achieve a new understanding, she said: “I’m not sure I’ve yet fully made peace with my childhood, but with my mum I have come to terms with everything.

“She had a really difficult time. There are so many parallels between us. Now I can understand everything. I think you have to experience hardships and pain yourself to fully understand people who have been through it and also you can never really experience happiness unless you’ve had that down feeling too.

“Sometimes it’s enjoyable to be a bit depressive, I think.” Ms Geldof spoke of how being a mother had “anchored” her in place, changing her life for the better.

She said: “It meant that I had to take care of someone properly, which I wasn’t doing for myself.”

She said that she would love to have another child, a girl, “purely to dress her up” as her own mother had done with her.

Ms Geldof also described the home she wanted to build for her children, where they could “express themselves and not feel stifled in any way”.

She said: “I want it to be a progressive household where they can come and talk to us about anything. The way I’ve been raising them is with pure love.

“I just have a lot of hopes for them, really, and I hope when they’re older they get to have a bit of the youth that I lost out on when I had them.”

And she described how being a mother had given her a new perspective on her own childhood.

She said: “Now I am a mum, I can correct those awful parts of my childhood and it’s a really healing process. Before, I was not at peace with myself about it because I was just traumatised.

“That’s why I was living a chaotic lifestyle. But now I have the kids I can heal the situation. It’s so good in every single way, really.”