Tina Knowles, the mother of Beyoncé and Solange Knowles, revealed that she had a secret brush with breast cancer
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Ahead of the release of her new memoir, Matriarch, Knowles admits that she missed a mammogram appointment at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and forgot to reschedule it until last year.
When she finally went in for the screening in July 2024, doctors made a sobering discovery: two tumors in her left breast. One was benign, but the other was diagnosed as stage 1 cancer.
“I’ve always tried to take care of myself, and I was in disbelief,” Knowles told Gayle King in a candid interview on CBS Mornings. “It was Stage 1, which I thought was the earliest stage,” she explained. “And then when I told my sister, she said, ‘No, actually there’s a zero.’ So if I had gone for my mammogram, I would have got it at the zero stage. Thank God it was still very small and hadn’t spread. It was a very slow-spreading cancer.”
In light of the diagnosis, her daughters stepped in with unwavering support. Beyoncé, she said, “took it well, staying positive, and I could already feel her mind racing, focusing on this as a task to tackle with precision.”
Solange, for her part, simply said, “Mom, we are going to take care of this,” Knowles recalled.
In August, Knowles underwent a lumpectomy to remove the cancerous tumor. The procedure went well, and she now celebrates being cancer-free.
Ms. Tina Knowles Encourages Women to Take Care of Their Health
Reflecting on the experience, she admitted to feeling anxious before the surgery. “I was nervous,” she recalled, noting how much it meant to have her daughters and a few close friends by her side at the hospital.
While she hesitated at first to share something so private, Ms Tina says the decision to go public with her journey felt important . “I think there are a lot of lessons in it for other women,” she said. “We get busy, we put ourselves last—but you have to get your screenings. If I hadn’t gone in when I did, I don’t even want to think about what could’ve happened.”
