Kelly Rowland opened up about her relationship with her father when she co-hosted Today With Hoda & Jenna on Tuesday. Joining her father, Christopher Lovett, on the show, Rowland reflected on the pair’s effort to rebuild a fractured relationship. The Destiny’s Child singer, who spent more than 30 years without speaking to her father, said she was angry at him as a child because she felt abandoned.
“My understanding of where my dad was as a kid was that he was not really ready as a father,” Rowland said. “I was angry at him, I was disappointed in him, I had all those feelings of abandonment. I think as a kid you just feel like if they’re not there, they don’t want to be. So that’s what I felt and that feeling sucked.”
While touring with Destiny’s Child, Rowland said she told security to make sure Lovett didn’t come backstage. The father and daughter, however, reconnected about five years ago. Rowland said she felt the need to reach out to her father after giving birth to her son Titan. Around the same time, the singer was also dealing with the death of her mother.
“I said, ‘I really need to know him. I want to meet him,’” Rowland said as she reflected on her effort to reconnect with her father. “I think I … had these feelings of like, ‘Oh my God, I have no parents.’ And it was like, no, you do, you have one left.”
The pair then decided to meet at a hotel in Atlanta.
“Before I walked in, I had all these thoughts of what I was gonna say. ‘Cause, you know, it was hurt in there, it was disappointment in there, it was curiosity in there. There were so many questions,” Rowland said.
As she sat down with her father for more than two hours at the meeting, Rowland said she mostly listened and learned about his own painful childhood.
“He’s telling me about his dynamic with his father, and his father’s father, and it’s nonexistent, too,” the singer said. “So how can one learn how to be something when they weren’t taught?”
But Lovett said he wanted his daughter to hear the other side of the story.
“Some of the things that other people said [about me] weren’t true,” he said. “And I couldn’t get a chance to see her … and tell her that I love her.”
For Rowland, it was necessary to hear those words.
“The little girl in me needed to hear that,” she said.
Rowland encourages other sons and daughters who may be holding grudges to forgive their parents.
“It was four or five years ago when we rekindled our relationship, and it’s never too late,” she said. “Forgiveness is always right there.”
The 41-year-old artist is now raising her own children, 7-year-old Titan and 13-month-old Noah.
