Kelly Rowland is opening up about the last moment she had with her mother, Doris Rowland Garrison, who died at the age of 66 after suffering a heart attack in 2014. While sitting down for an interview on the High Low with EmRata podcast, Rowland said she regrets her last in-person interaction with her mother.
“The last embrace I had with my mother was a really tough one. It was a lot of, like, tension there,” the Grammy-winning singer told model-turned-host Emily Ratajkowski. “It was time for her plane ride and we had this really bad argument right before and 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.”
She continued, “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.”
The 42-year-old multitalented star used the regretful moment as an opportunity to do better going forward, saying it made her a better parent.
“It made me more present, it made me not want to hold anger or harbor anger towards anybody ’cause life is too short,” she said. “It made me want to be honest with somebody and tell them how I felt in the moment, even if I’m mad.”
In 2022, Rowland opened up about her feelings of abandonment from her father, Christopher Lovett, Blavity previously reported. The two, however, reconnected in 2017 after staying apart for over 30 years. Rowland said she became open to fixing her relationship with her father while grieving her mother’s death. “I said, ‘I really need to know him. I want to meet him,'” Rowland shared during her appearance on Today with Hoda & Jenna. “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.”
Speaking with radio personality Angie Martinez on the IRL Podcast in 2022, Rowland said she is taking a gentle approach as a parent.
“What gentle parenting is trying to do is break the generational curse of talking at your kids, and making them feel seen and respected,” she said. “And the first place they’re going to understand love and respect and self-awareness is in the home.”
Watch Rowland’s full interview on the High Low with EmRata podcast below:
