Courtney Love's mother and me

Back in about 2008 I was feeling pretty bummed out by the recession, which had resulted in the termination of several of Cooper Publishing's* freelance editing/design contracts. My wife and I had come to rely on these contracts to help pay the bills, which were fairly significant at the time in part because we had two kids who each needed two successive sets of braces. Yikes. 

So I decided to see if a counselor might be able to help lift me out of my funk—and figure out a way forward. My employer at the time, Oregon State University, offered three free therapy sessions through its Employee Assistance Program (EAP), the hitch being that you had to pick from among the few therapists who qualified for coverage within the program.

So I did a bit of research on the covered therapists, accompanied by a quick spin of the roulette wheel, and ended up selecting one named Linda Carroll. Prior to my first visit with her, I did a little more research (ain't Google wonderful?) and discovered that Ms. Carroll happened to be…Courtney Love's mother.

Linda Carroll

Courtney Love (2014)

Yep, that Courtney Love. Kurt Cobain's widow. Lead vocalist of the rock band band Hole. Golden Globe-nominated star of The People vs. Larry Flynt.

What the hell was Courtney Love's mother doing working as a therapist in podunk Corvallis, Oregon? And what the hell was I thinking, scheduling a therapy session with her? And why was I asking myself such questions, unless I was feeling weird or sheepish or creepy for going to a therapist whose daughter was…so…famous?

Ultimately I decided that the answers to these questions were irrelevant, because I sincerely did need some help, and I thought that maybe the mother of such a, um, famous person might at least be interesting to talk to, if nothing else.

As it turns out, I was right. Among the interesting things I learned during my three sessions with Ms. Carroll were that

• she was estranged from her daughter—or vice versa, as Ms. Carroll told me the estrangement was unilateral on Ms. Love's part
• she once dropped LSD with Jerry Garcia, with four-year-old Courtney in the room (hmmm…)
• one of her former patients was the infamous fugitive Katherine Ann Power
• she had published a memoir titled Her Mother's Daughter: A Memoir of the Mother I Never Knew and of My Daughter, Courtney Love about her birth mother, novelist Paula Fox (who had given Linda up for adoption at birth), and, um, her daughter

Whether Ms. Carroll learned anything from me is a matter of speculation, but I suspect the main thing she gleaned was that, as a victim of the recession, I was an unlikely candidate for the weeklong couples therapy retreat that she and her husband offered. Also, since Ms. Carroll had revealed to me that she was on her third marriage, I wasn't entirely convinced she qualified as a, um, role model for a couples therapy course.

Did she help lift me out of my funk? Not really, but she did provide a welcome distraction—and fodder for this blog post. So I guess that's something.

*Technically my wife's company, but we shared the workload