Remembering Chester Bennington

Chester and Samantha Marie Olit

Samantha is Chester's first wife. They met while he was working at Burger King and married in 1997. They divorced in 2005. They have one son together, Draven Sebastian Bennington, born in 2002. Samantha criticized Chester's funeral, saying that her son and her were excluded from it, and that the memorial focused too heavily on his musical persona and not enough on his family life.
Three years after Chester's passing, she released a memoir about loss, love and healing, called Falling Love Notes: Memories of a Rock Star Wife. As for why she chose now to write the memoir, she says it was actually in the works for a long time. "I had to emotionally heal from a lot of things," she says. "I decided to release it now because with the way the world is now, I feel like the whole world needs healing. There's something I discovered with the writing process — it's very healing to write down your thoughts and reflect. That's how I came up with the title — it's love letters to myself, as well as others. There's some really special letters in there."
As for how she and Draven have been faring, she says they're doing the best they can. "There's always going to be piece of him missing because it's his father," she says of their son. "But I'm extremely proud of him. He really dove into his art and his healing. We decided to give ourselves permission to live and be happy, and through my life coaching and writing, I was able to do that. I told him he had permission to love and heal and be happy, because that's what his dad would want." Draven realized the book cover.