The actress and singer lost her mother in 2018 but she will never forget everything her mother did for her, nor the love she was showered in.
Losing someone you love can be heart-wrenchingly painful. There's a sudden void in you that is near impossible to dispel and everything that reminds you of them only makes you feel the presence of that emptiness much more. And for actress Queen Latifah, losing her mother, Rita Owens, was a crushing blow. But that didn't mean her mom was gone from her life completely. After all, for a mother-daughter duo who were famous for their tight-knit relationship, the Ladies First singer knew that Owens was still with her, just not physically.
Speaking on the new People Every Day podcast, the Girls' Trip actress opened up about how her mother's love helped her through her intense and unique hip-hop and Hollywood career. "She was always an encouragement," Latifah said about her mom whom she lost in 2018 following a long battle with an autoimmune disease called scleroderma. In fact, "everything queenly about me came from my mother," she added.
Owens was always there for her daughter and was her biggest cheerleader throughout her career. She even made sure to accompany her 17-year-old daughter to late-night club performances. She also supported Latifah and her friends as they were forming the hit early 90s hip-hop collective, Flavor Unit. "She believed in us as youngsters. That made a big difference, having an adult who believes in this new burgeoning kind of music that you're doing, not just as a form of music, but as a form of you using your mind, your voice, your talent, and having some direction," said the star.
Recalling moments "when everything was too heavy for me to bear, I would disappear and call my mother," the Academy Award-winning actress said. "She had a calmness about her that could calm you down when you were at a 10." And now that the actress is back in her home state for filming, she can't help but feel closer to not just her childhood - "It's just surreal, almost, with shooting on streets that I grew up on. Places that are so close to my heart. This is visceral when we shoot here," - but to her mom too.
"She still talks to me. I know it's going to sound crazy, but I get little signs. Lights will blink. Things will flicker," the 50-year-old star said. "People will come into my life that I don't know where they came from, but they become very helpful." But Owens didn't just leave such an indelible mark on her daughter and her friends. As a teacher, she changed and shaped the lives of countless other kids as well. "She made such a big impact, not just on my life, but on thousands of students whose lives she changed over her 25 years of teaching — kids who thought they had no future until they met Mrs. O. and she called them by their names and told them that they can be whatever they wanted to be," she says. "And they may not have ever heard that message before."
Being back home, Latifah feels that "her memory is everywhere I go." And now, "when I'm in her house, I just look around at the beauty she curated and all of the African art on the walls. I'm like, 'Mom, you really, really thought about these things in a beautiful way.' She's in my fiber."
Despite losing her mom to scleroderma, the Taxi actress is grateful that she had the chance to take care of her mom in her final days, according to People. As she says in the documentary Beyond Breathless, in which she opens up about her mother's experience with the disease, she learned a few important lessons.
"I learned to be faithful. I was very grateful. I learned to have a lot of compassion for anyone who's caring for someone who's not well in their family. It can take a lot out of you, but it's taking more out of them, so whenever you start feeling bad about yourself you think about the fight that they're fighting. And my mom was fighting that fight, and she managed to help us to keep the faith," Latifah revealed.
As for remembering her mom, "She's a very special person. And to me, she's my mom, but she was my best friend. She's a very strong person and a beautiful person. I hope that that will be her legacy, as well as being so unselfish as to share her story with others," said the actress who is doing her best to maintain the values and love that her mom gave her.
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Cover image source: Getty Images | Photo by Andrew H. Walker
