In her highly anticipated new memoir, “Matriarch,” Tina Knowles was, of course, going to give insight into what it took to raise her daughters Beyoncé and Solange. But she struggled with whether to reveal what was happening with her health. “I was diagnosed with breast cancer in my left breast,” she told Gayle King in an exclusive interview in her home on CBS News This Morning. When Gayle asked her how hard it was to say the words, Knowles patted her chest and said, “I’m getting emotional, I’ve always tried to take care of myself… because I was in disbelief.”
King noted that the American Cancer Society recommends a mammogram every one to two years for women over 55. Knowles missed hers during the COVID pandemic and forgot to reschedule it until last year. And that’s when doctors found two tumors. One was benign, the other had Stage One cancer.
“It was Stage One, which I thought was the earliest stage. But when I told my sister, she said no, there’s actually a stage 0.’ If I had gone for my mammogram, they would have caught it in the zero stage. Thank God, it was very small and it hadn’t spread.”
Knowles had a very slow spreading cancer and chose a lumpectomy procedure to remove the tumor from her left breast. She told King how all her girls came to the hospital, told her jokes, and showed her videos to make her laugh.
“But then I thought about the song ‘Walk With Me,’ that they used to sing all the time,” she said, getting emotional.”Michelle wasn’t there, Solange filled in, Angie sang, and they sang “Walk With Me.” It’s about God walking with you and protecting you.” Knowles said she felt protected as she walked into the surgery.
Last October, Knowles was honored as Glamour’s Woman of the Year, but she was almost unable to attend because of a complication after surgery. She contracted a terrible infection.
In her acceptance speech, she said, “I’ve been so blessed in my life to do many things. I’ve had many careers. But I’ve always said that the best job that I’ve had in my life is being a mother. I’ve had the privilege of raising and helping to raise four daughters. Two that were born to me, and two that were a gift to me from God. You know, I was somewhat of a rebellious teen and young adult, and I didn’t always follow the rules, but the day that I became a mother, I decided that this was the one thing that wouldn’t screw up.”
Ms. Knowles has a little anxiety putting her book into the world to be scrutinized because people always have something to say. She said her book was initially 1,000 pages, and she had to whittle things down. “I hope people will be inspired by the things I have overcome.”
Note: In 2021, Ms Knowles’ ex-husband, Matthew, revealed his breast cancer diagnosis.
