Tina Knowles is laying it all out inside her brand-new memoir, Matriarch, which officially dropped on April 22. In the deeply personal book, the powerhouse behind two of music’s most iconic singers gets candid about one of the darkest periods of her life, which happened while her famous daughter Beyoncé was pregnant with her first child, Blue Ivy. The celebrity glam-mother also confesses to having a few sneaky links with her ex-husband Mathew Knowles shortly after the pair filed for divorce in 2009.
During an interview with PEOPLE published Tuesday, Knowles opened up about the emotional toll that weighed on her when internet bullies spread a vicious rumor about Beyoncé faking her pregnancy with Blue Ivy in 2011. The momager and former hairdresser said a feeling of dread washed over her after a viral video appeared to show Bey’s pregnant belly flattening out as she sat down during an interview with an Australian media outlet. The rumors eventually spiraled out of control until Blue was born in 2012.
“My family is so precious to me and babies are so sacred. So to hear people say the most horrendous things and call my whole family a lie, because we would all have to be part of that conspiracy and lie about something so sacred.”
Knowles admitted the experience was especially difficult because she felt silenced. Beyoncé believed that speaking to the press would only make things worse, so Tina had to keep it all to herself.
“It was the worst because I couldn’t say anythin,” she told PEOPLE. My daughter was saying, ‘No, you’re going to make the story bigger.’ But it didn’t go away for a long time. It’s one of the most painful things for me, that people could be that disgusting.”
Even today, when rumors spread about her family, it can be painful to watch, but she’s learned how to cope better when issues arise.
“I deal with lies all the time. I’m dealing with lies now, that I’m having, like, an invisible zipper at my mouth to talk about things now because there’s always these crazy rumors that are out there and, people just get to lie and they don’t have to suffer any consequences, you know, it is very sad,” she added.
Tina Knowles kept “sneakin’” around with ex-husband Mathew Knowles after she filed for divorce.
Matriarch also includes a bombshell confession centered on Mathew Knowles, Tina’s former husband from 1980 to 2011.
Inside the book, the mother, who shares Bey and her sister Solange with the record executive, admitted to quietly reconnecting with Mathew several times before their divorce was officially finalized.
After filing for divorce in 2009 due to Mathew’s infidelity, Knowles revealed that she briefly reconsidered her decision when her ex-husband visited her in New York City just three months after she filed. According to Tina, Mathew seemed to be making an effort to change, which gave her a moment of doubt.
“He’d changed after new counseling,” she wrote, according to US Weekly. “I didn’t believe him, but he was persistent, proved he’d gotten help, and as he courted me, I found myself falling in love again. The magnetic pull between us, this cosmic cord I had tried to cut so many times, was stronger than ever.”
Knowles wrote that she began “sneakin’” around town with Mathew without anyone knowing—not even her daughters, Beyoncé and Solange, for nearly a year. However, in 2010, Tina came clean about the hidden rendezvous after a close call. While the girls were in Galveston for Mother’s Day, they nearly ran into Mathew when he was with Tina at her house. He quickly rushed out before they arrived, but Tina decided it was time to tell the truth. According to the superstar mom, “Beyoncé was more understanding than Solange.”
“They each loved their dad in different ways, and I sometimes felt my youngest was so much like her dad that she felt his moments of failing on a soul-deep level,” she added.
You can grab your copy of Matriarch now at a bookstore near you or order it online.
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