Beyoncé Knowles' mother, Tina, recently served as the keynote speaker for the Texas Women's Empowerment Foundation's eighth annual Women & Money luncheon in Houston last week, and she took the opportunity to share her personal story and battle with low self-esteem after her divorce from her husband of 33 years. While discussing her split from Matthew Knowles, the former Destiny's Child stylist revealed the internal battle she was dealing with.
I was very sad. When you look at someone else, you look at them and say, 'They're attractive. They have a lot of good stuff going on for them. They have no right to have low self-esteem. They have no right to feel sorry for themselves.' Well, it doesn't matter who you are, what you are, what you've done, what you you have. You're a person, you're a human being. And when something strikes you like that, it takes breath out of you. And my fight came back. After a while, I let myself feel sorry for myself for a minute and then I said, 'You know, I'm so blessed to have all the opportunities that I have. And I don't have the right to feel sorry.'
Knowles said with all of the chaos around her, she needed to take some time out for herself, which ended up being her saving grace.
"So I would tell my kids, 'You know what, you can call me and I'll be there if it's something important, but otherwise, I'm taking care of Tina. This is my selfish moment,'" she said. "And before I knew it, I started liking me again! I started being important, not everybody else."
She ended things on a positive note with a word on overcoming struggle.
"If you are going through it, just know it's called "going through it," you're not going to get stuck there, you are not going to die, you are going to survive."
Watch Tina Knowles' full speech after the jump.
