Tina Knowles has revealed that she was diagnosed with stage 1 breast cancer in her left breast July, 2024.
She stated that doctors made the discovery soon after she and her daughter, Beyoncé, launched their Cécred hair-care line. Knowles was also completing the manuscript of her new memoir, titled “Matriarch.”
“I struggled with whether I would share that journey [in the book] because I’m very private. But I decided to share it because I think it’s a lot of lessons in it for other women. I think as women, sometimes we get so busy and we get so wrapped up and running around, but you must go get your test. Because if I had not gotten my test early, I mean, I shudder to think what could have happened to me.”
Tina Knowles
She said she had actually missed getting a mammogram at one point.
“I forgot that I didn’t go to get my test two years before I thought I had because Covid came and they called me and cancelled me and they said, we’ll call you when we start testing again. And I just thought I had done it. So you cannot play around with that.”
Tina Knowles
Knowles writes in her new book about how her daughters, Beyoncé and Solange, took the news.
Beyoncé, her mother wrote, “took it well, staying positive, and I could already feel her mind racing, focusing on this as a task to tackle with precision,” while Solange told her “we are going to take care of this.”
Her niece, Angie, and Beyoncé’s friend and fellow Destiny’s Child member, Kelly Rowland, also supported her, Knowles wrote. “My girls became my team,” she said in her book.
She says she knows that the cancer could have been detected at stage 0 had she not missed her mammogram. Tina Knowles said she is now “cancer-free and incredibly blessed that God allowed me to find it early.”
Knowles added that she’s now eating healthier and has lost some weight. Her memoir is currently available for purchase.
Tina Knowles on Navigating Marriage, Parenting criticisms
Tina Knowles wrote candidly in her memoir about the highs and lows of her 30-year marriage to Mathew Knowles.
She said from the beginning, there was infidelity in their marriage on his part and she realized she needed to be prepared.
“I was pregnant and things were — they just got really bad at that time. I knew that I had to make a move and I didn’t want to be dependent on him.”
Tina Knowles
She started planning what she called her escape plan. Knowles opened a hair salon called Headliners, which was so successful and it became the family’s main source of income and helped to fund Beyoncé’s budding musical career.
Mathew Knowles left his sales executive role at Xerox and started working as Destiny’s Child’s manager full-time. Their partnership as parents helped to hold their marriage together.
“People say to me, ‘how did you stay so long?’ And I’m like, ‘well, I was married for 33 years, but 33 years were not bad.’ … You know, maybe 15 of them were bad, but we would have these long stretches where we would do really great.”
Tina Knowles
While their marriage struggled, Knowles said they were always present parents, but subject to scrutiny. She recalled the criticism people would say after Solange became pregnant as a teenager.
“Crazy stuff like, ‘well you wasn’t paying no attention. You’re so busy running behind B that you couldn’t see’ — blah, blah, blah. I’m like, ‘that is absolutely not true’. They didn’t know the backstory of Solange losing her best friend and wanting to hurry up and be a grownup ’cause she thought she wouldn’t live so long.”
Tina Knowles
Knowles said Solange made it clear she was getting married. “I said, ‘OK, well let me at least give you a wedding,’ you know, and made it memorable for her, but you can’t control somebody else’s life. It’s their life,” she stated.
Knowles also wrote about an untrue rumor that surfaced during Beyoncé’s first pregnancy, where people said she wasn’t carrying the baby.
“She went on a show in Australia and she had this very broad cloth type of dress. She wasn’t huge pregnant. She was very proud of her little stomach and she bent over and the fabric of the dress bent … they started this vicious, horrible rumor that she wasn’t pregnant.”
Tina Knowles
Knowles expressed her heartache over the situation and anger over people thinking her daughter faked a pregnancy and used prosthetics.
She admitted she did not speak up even as the devastating rumor escalated, saying that Beyoncé thought it would go away and handles these situations well.
“I was never so enraged because this should have been a sacred experience and what they didn’t know is that my child had been through a couple miscarriages, which were so painful.
“I’m not so good at that. I will cuss you out about my kids. That was one of the worst times of my life. It really was. I would cry, I would get so mad and I would get so upset.”
Tina Knowles
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