Bobbi Kristina’s Future: Spend more time with family

Now that Whitney Houston has been laid to rest, sources say her daughter Bobbi Kristina will be spending time with family and friends as she deals with the loss of her beloved mother with whom she was incredibly close.

Denise Council, who attended the ceremony at New Hope Baptist Church on Saturday told People.com that during the ceremony “Bobbi Kristina broke down, but she was good. She was up in the front row … and (did) pretty good, all considering.”

Council added that Houston’s mother Cissy was “wonderful.”

One of the more moving moments of the weekend was the image of Bobby Kristina hand in hand with her grandmother, Cissy Houston, entering the Newark funeral home on Friday to say goodbye to Whitney Houston privately.

It was the first time the 18-year-old had been seen since her mother was found dead on Feb. 11, 2012.

The only child of Houston and singer Bobby Brown had been in Los Angeles with her mother to attend pre-Grammy festivities and was staying at the Beverly Hilton Hotel when Houston was found dead in her hotel room.

Whitney Houston’s brother-in law, Billy Watson, told ABCNews.com that Bobbi Kristina was “doing OK” after she “broke down” the weekend Houston died and had to be taken to the hospital twice for stress and anxiety.

Bobbi Kristina spent some time with her father in California before returning to New Jersey for her mother’s funeral.

Bobbi Kristina Houston Brown arrives at Whigham Funeral Home for a private viewing for her mother Whitney Houston on February 17, 2012 in Newark, New Jersey.

“My daughter Bobbi-Kristina is doing much better,” Bobby Brown said in statement last week. “We continue to provide love and support to Bobbi-Kristina. She is dealing with the tragedy of her mother’s death and would prefer to do it outside of the public eye. I ask again that our privacy be respected.”

On the family’s reality-TV show, “Being Bobby Brown,” it was Bobbi Kristina Brown who often acted more like the parent in the often-erratic relationship between her mother and father.

Sources close to the family say that Houston’s well-known battles with addiction were also a heavy burden for her daughter to bear.

“It’s very common, when a parent has an addiction, for the child to be parentalized,” Dr. Drew Pinsky, host of HLN’s “Dr. Drew,” told ABC News. “It’s almost a survival mode to try and control and maintain that addictive parent safely, the child takes on the role of parent or parents.”

Bobby Brown has denied that Bobbi Kristina has used drugs.

After the National Enquirer published photographs in May that appeared to show Bobbi Kristina snorting cocaine, her father Bobby Brown told ABC News Now, “I don’t know anything about that. My daughter, she doesn’t, she doesn’t do that.”

Bobbi Kristina Brown also defended herself on Twitter a day after the photos came out, saying she was “set up” by a money-hungry ex-boyfriend because of “a horrible relationship that went sour.”It’s really not what it looks like,” she wrote.

The Daily Beast reported that after Saturday’s funeral service, Bobbi Kristina disappeared for several hours leading to panic in the Houston family. Cissy Houston was reportedly “beside herself.”

According to the report, “there was some confusion about Bobbi Kristina’s whereabouts last night for a short time, but she’s OK,” a Houston family spokesperson told The Daily Beast. “She needed some time alone.”

The spokesperson added that Bobbi Kristina isn’t on drugs and is just emotionally fragile at this time. “She is going through a very hard time as you can expect.”

Brown, an aspiring singer herself, posted a video in September of her singing acapella Adele’s “Someone Like You” on her Twitter page.

Despite her rich musical lineage the road ahead musically could be tricky.

“There is no way people are not going to compare her to her mother — not to Rihanna, to her mother — and if she doesn’t sound on par with her mother or better, people are going to say horrible things,” Billy Johnson Jr., a senior editor at Yahoo! Music, told ABCNews.com. “The public scrutiny is so great.

“I would encourage her to take her time,” Johnson said. “People said the same thing about Michael Jackson’s children. She needs to sort out things in life a little bit more before rushing into this adult world.

“I think she’s already dealing with a lot,” he told ABCNews.

 

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