In an honest quote from her upcoming memoir 'Matriarch,' Tina Knowles, the mother of some of the world's biggest stars, Beyoncé and Solange, reveals the emotional tug-of-war that drove her back into the arms of her former husband, Mathew Knowles.
Her marriage to Mathew was rocked after his cheating and the birth of a love child, and Tina filed for divorce in 2009. But as she admits in her book, that was not the end of their story yet.
"He had transformed after some new counseling," Tina writes. "I didn't believe him, but he pursued, showed me that he had been getting help, and as he courted me, I fell in love again. It wasn't simply forgiving and forgetting but something even more profound. Tina talks about magnific propulsion in the space between them, a connection she tried to sever "so many times" just to find it growing stronger behind closed doors.
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It is so secret that Beyoncé and Solange never found out. Tina and Mathew hid their short fling from their daughters, worried about what could be said or felt. "We knew the kids would be so angry at us if they found out we were together again," she admits. "Our bond felt so much stronger because we were sneaking.
It's an unforgettable image of the kids' parents sneaking around like some midlife version of Romeo and Juliet, not away from the world but from the kids they'd raised to adulthood. Tina's genuineness here is disarming. It's not the fairy tale of reconciliation one might expect.
But the reprieve didn't last long. In 2010, just a year after saying they wanted to "work things out" and reconnect with what they had, Matthew fathered a child with TaQoya Branscomb. That was the final straw.
"I was acutely aware that my relationship with Mathew was unhealthy," Tina writes. "And there was fear of not having a partner and going alone that's always kept me stuck.
It's a resonant moment of truth. Far below the tabloid headlines, the family legacy, the fame, and fortune, Tina Knowles gives us a portrait of what it means to be flesh and blood, to love someone deeply, even despite what they've done to you, to hold onto something that was, knowing it shouldn't be again, and to agonize, eventually, let go.
Her daughters' anger was their mother suffered heartbreak twice at the hands of the same man. And even as an adult, to witness your mother decide to go back to that kind of hurt can be confusing, even infuriating.
But Tina isn't seeking sympathy or acceptance; she is just telling her truth. In doing so, however, she lets us hear the sound of the vulnerability and resilience many women, unfortunately, know far too well. "Matriarch" is more than a memoir but a mirror. And Tina Knowles is not too modest to let us see the reflection.
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