Kelly Rowland lost her mother weeks after giving birth to her first child in 2014. At a time when most women rely heavily on their mothers, the Destiny’s Child singer found comfort in her community of women, her “shecosystem,” as she navigated the ebbs and flows of both postpartum and grief.
“To be honest, I’m grateful to have such wonderful, strong mothers next to me in my community,” she told ABC News’ Linsey Davis. “Strong women helped me get through that, whether they were mothers or not, to be honest. Whether it was to pat me on my back, to let me cry, to let me grieve, to not judge me when the grief came up.”
In 2014, Rowland’s mother, Doris Rowland Garrison, died of a heart attack at 66 years old. Her untimely passing changed the “Motivation” singer’s mindset as she recalls getting into an argument with her late mother two weeks before receiving the call that changed her life.
“The last embrace I had with my mother was a really tough one. It was a lot of, like, tension there,” Rowland previously revealed on the High Low with EmRata podcast. “It was time for her plane ride and we had this really bad argument right before she left, ’cause her car was downstairs. I remember my husband saying, ‘Give your mom a hug, babe.’ And I was like, ‘I’m not giving her,’ I was so mad. And next thing I knew, I gave her this wack a–hug, and the next call I got was two weeks later that she was gonna pass in like hours.”
“It made me more present, it made me not want to hold anger or harbor anger towards anybody ’cause life is too short,. It made me want to be honest with somebody and tell them how I felt in the moment, even if I’m mad,” she added at the time.
Getting emotional, Rowland recalled how women like Tina Knowles (Mama T), Beyoncé, Solange, Yvette Noel Schure, and more offered her a soft place to land in that season. A season she tapped into when preparing for her role as Leah in “Relationship Goals.”
“I think I understand that in my character, Leah, in the fact that she was just like, ‘Let me just keep going.’ But sometimes when you keep going, and you don’t deal with it, the next wave that’s following up behind it is an even bigger one,” she shared.
Like her character, Rowland recalls the moment one of her friends finally forced her to pause: “I remember one of my girlfriends just saying, ‘You just out here going about life, like nothing has happened. What is going on with you?’ And she looked at me, and I just broke.”
“And I’m just happy that I have my Mama T, Bey, Solange, Angie, my list goes on and on, Yvette, my husband’s mother, Jackie, I love her so much. My husband’s sister, my sister-in-love, Dawn. I have a community of women. La La, I can literally name them all, but they’ve poured into me, and I’m just grateful for my shecosystem,” she concluded.
