Talinda Bennington recently made an appearance at the Canadian Event Safety Summit to talk about her experience with the passing of the frontman.
She shared: “My husband had had a past… in the past, he had attempted suicide, but I thought to myself, ‘It was ’cause he was wasted. He was this or that.’ So [before] he did pass, I thought very naïvely, we were in the clear.”
“We had a very, very dear friend, Chris Cornell, take his own life. And I felt that, ‘Okay, Chester sees what Vicky and [their] kids’ — we’re godparents to their children — ‘what they’re going through and this will never happen.'”
During the speech she gave at the Canadian Event Safety Summit, she shared that the whole Bennington family had just enjoyed a trip to Sedona, Ariz. Chester Bennington had to leave early because he had promotional work to do surrounding the release of “One More Light”.
“He had to go back home early to work. He was very excited to be promoting the new album and doing stuff, so he was happy. He gave me a kiss goodbye, he gave the kids a kiss goodbye, and I never saw him again.”
About Chester Bennington’s passing, Talinda Bennington shared the following.
“[It was] shame that he had just begun to share with me in the couple of months before he died, shame I didn’t even know a person could have,” she said. “So when he passed, and I learned that there were two empty beer bottles in the room, I knew he had relapsed, but I also knew he wasn’t so intoxicated out of his mind like I would have thought. I knew instantly that that drink triggered that shame, triggered a lifetime of unhealthy neural pathways.”
The topics discussed above can also be seen in the video below.
It was a very difficult watch, but in order to end the stigma around mental health issues and depression, it’s important to keep the dialogue open.
Talinda Bennington has been an active member of the movement who’s fighting depression and suicide. She’s been an avid Twitter user and even created the hashtags #fuckdepression and #makechesterproud to help her reach those in need. Her efforts do not go unnoticed and we for one think what she’s doing is not only valuable but also very brave, given what she has, and continues to go through.
Watch the entire communication in the video below.
