Meadow Walker also posted a photo with her smiling, at the beach

Jul 8, 2014 12:41 GMT  ·  By

After her father's tragic death in November last year, 15-year-old Meadow Walker has remained silent and avoided any contact with the press, although she has been presumably relentlessly assaulted by all sorts of publications desperate to get her take on events.

Ever since then, she's been involved in a bitter custody battle that has seen her grandmother, Walker's mother, and her biological mother duke it out in the courtroom over who gets to be her legal guardian.

Meadow seems to have put all of that behind her as she emerged on Instagram over the weekend, smiling while in a bathing suit at the beach. The photo was captioned simply “glad to be back,” hinting that she finally was making a return to public life after Walker's death.

The only presence she's had on social media up to now has been sparse and mostly to warn people off about fake accounts using her own name.

Users who saw the photo and the message were quick to send their best wishes and urged Meadow to remain strong under the circumstances. Though most of the messages offered condolences about her departed father, not many dared to bring up the custody issue.

At the moment, it's not exactly clear what Meadow's legal situation is, but it was last reported a couple of months ago that her grandmother had dropped the custody suit which she had embarked on amidst rumors that Meadow's mother, Rebecca Soteros, was an alcoholic and unable to take care of her through this trying time.

The twist in the tale was that Meadow's guardianship also came with several millions of dollars, since Walker left his entire fortune to his only child. At the moment, Meadow is still living with her mother.

While all of this family drama was unfolding away from the public eye, the world's attention was turned towards the last “Fast & Furious” movie that Paul was in the process of filming when he passed away. The producers decided to complete the feature, despite initial reports that the movie was getting scrapped.

The studio brought in Paul's two younger brothers in an effort to help them complete the shoot by using an intricate system of real actors and CGI. The outcome was so good that it was reported that one of the brothers even signed on for two more films in the same car racing franchise, but that remains to be seen.

Right now, the movie is currently being wrapped up, and the studio has just announced that it is pushing up the release date to bring the movie to a new slot in terms of cinematic releases.