Mashonda’s Life Lessons

After seeing the back and forth tweets about it, I finally got to read the powerful interview that VIBE Magazine did with Swizz Beatz’ ex wife, Mashonda. Wow, so much power in her words.

In this tell all interview, Mashonda Tifrere, talks about everything from finding out about her husband’s cheating, how she tried to reach out to Alicia Keys, the pain of going through the divorce and how she tried to still make sure that her son is raised in the most loving environment she can provide. In the interview, Mashonda is open, honest and she is not bitter. What I loved most about this interview is that it did not leave me hating Alicia Keys or Swizz. What I took from it are the valuable life lessons she shares. How to let go, How to deal with pain, How to take humiliation & embarrassment in your face but still leave with your dignity in tact. Not many women can do what she did and I am touched. I also have to say well done to the interviewer, Tray Hova, this is a beautiful interview and the questions asked were just on point.

The entire interview is great but below are just a couple (a lot) of my favourite excerpts from the VIBE interview:

I know it was very important for you to sit down with Alicia if she was going to be around your son. Safe to assume that happened?

When I wrote her that Twitter letter everybody wanted to say things like ‘Oh, what do you need to meet her for? It’s not her problem, it’s Swizz’s.” I’m like, ‘You have a kid, go through what I went through and then talk to me.’ I’m not having my son around anybody I don’t know. I don’t give a shit who you are and how much money you have and what management he’s going to be under when he visits you. I need to see you and I need you to see how serious I am about him. And that’s what happened. We had to sit down, and I told her how I felt. I didn’t mention anything else, it was all about my son and it was fine after that. I’m not going sit and talk to [them] about what happened between the three of us. This is about my son.

When did this meeting finally take place?
It took a good year and a half. I think that only happened in March.

How was Alicia’s demeanor?
She just listened.

This all sounds like a really awkward gathering…
It wasn’t awkward; I wouldn’t have done it if I wasn’t ready. I said what I had to say as a mom. It was a whole sit down dinner. So you know how intimate that is. There are certain things we have to do as women in order to move forward.

Very true, have you received an apology from either one of them yet?
Nope.

Surprising?
No, because I honestly feel like they think they didn’t do anything wrong. I don’t care about their apology. As long as he’s a great dad to my son and she’s a good step-mom, they don’t have to worry about apologizing because they will never understand or care about the pain I went through. That was a big thing at first, I felt like nobody was respecting me. He’s not respecting me, she’s not respecting me. [But] then I had to say, ‘Fuck my ego, because this can’t be an ego thing. If it is I’m going to fall down and die.’ People feel that they are so happy and they are so in love, but what really happens is that real love does not come from a foundation when you hurt somebody else. Love does not happen like this. Love doesn’t involve hurt, lies, or destructing anybody else’s soul.

If real love isn’t born from infidelity, are you saying it wouldn’t shock you if their soon-to-be marriage ended in divorce?
I don’t think about it, it’s not my concern. I don’t think about them anymore. If there was no little boy involved in this, I would’ve probably moved to another country by now. I’ve thought about going to live in Europe, but I can’t because his dad is here. I don’t like confusion, I don’t like drama, I don’t like none of that stuff. I would have left before the divorce was even final.

“Real love does not come from a foundation when you hurt somebody else. Love does not happen like this. Love doesn’t involve hurt, lies, or destructing anybody else’s soul.”

How did you even find out that they were engaged and she was pregnant? Please don’t tell me the blogs.
I knew these things for a couple of months… I never talked to him about it though. It’s his life, but people talk. Nobody is nobody’s friend when it comes to stuff like this. There are people in their circles that talk and it gets back to me and I’m like ‘Wow, okay.’ I still feel like we should tell each other…No, I don’t care. I don’t give him the vibe that I care, so he wouldn’t feel obligated to tell me.

If you were generously invited, would you attend their wedding?
No. Not out of malice, but because weddings are sacred. It’s just not my place. The only reason I went to his birthday party was because he invited me and I did that for myself. I needed to see them together for it to transfer. And I was like ‘Wow, this is real.’ We were still totally married…We had a divorce that was nowhere near final, but I just needed to see them in action for it to be real to me, and it was definitely real. You have all these different types of steps that you have to set up for yourself until you get to that place where you are free. And I will tell you, after I got divorced maybe three weeks later I woke up and felt a weight removed. It was the first time I’d ever felt mentally free. And I sent him an email wishing him all the best in the world.

“You have all these different types of steps that you have to set up for yourself until you get to that place where you are free.”

When was the last you cried?
I haven’t cried in about a year. I don’t cry anymore. I thank the good Lord for that, because it takes a lot for me to cry now. It’s been a journey. The whole first year I cried my fucking brains out. And when “Try Sleeping With a Broken Heart” came out, I was like… “Wow, this song is for me.” [Laughs] I would cry in my sleep, I would wake up crying.

Does it hurt listening to her now? Were you an Alicia Keys fan?
I believed her before.

And now?
I don’t make it an effort to listen. I don’t make it an effort not to listen. I still like her songs. She’s head over heels in love and I get it. Every woman deserves to feel that, not at the expense of another woman though. But I understand why some of the decisions were made on her part, because her heart was so in it. I can’t fight that [and] I can’t fight her because she’s a household name. People are always going to love her for her music, as they should. She makes great music, but no one is really ever going to understand what happened in this house. Bottom line, the rule is, if you’re messing with somebody, you don’t know they’re married, and you found out they’re married if you come into any contact with that wife, leave it alone… respect the woman, respect the wife. Like I said before, it was an ego thing for me. I’m being fucking disrespected, nobody respects me, this is my husband, this is my family, this girl thinks she can just do anything she thinks she wants to. And that’s what I dealt with for a while, until I gave up.

Ego can be a dangerous thing. Were you still in love with him while you were fighting for your marriage?
I got to be honest with you… I was not in love. Love is unconditional; “in love” is very conditional. [Being] in love is a state of insanity, infatuation, when you can’t live without that person. But when one thing goes wrong you feel crazy, it’s insane. So when you’re able to tell the difference you’re better off. Because [being] in love doesn’t last, [it’s] for the moments. Love is forever. I still love him, he’s the father to my son. We have history, there’s no reason not for me to love him. What he did was done for me to learn something. I don’t blame him anymore. Now he has to learn because I’ve already learned.

Love is unconditional; “in love” is very conditional. [Being] in love is a state of insanity, infatuation, when you can’t live without that person.

You mentioned there being infidelity prior to Alicia. What happened?
His older son Nasir was born while we were together. We were living together [and] I was pregnant at the time. I stressed so much because I found out [the other woman] was pregnant… it put me into pre-labor. I lost my baby in 2000 when I was five-and-a-half months. It was tragedy. Nothing compares to losing a child. That shit put me into a two-year depression, it took me six years to even try [having a baby] again. I was afraid. So not only did I lose my baby, but now I was waiting for this other woman to have hers. Because of what happened to me, he wanted me to name the baby. He wanted a Muslim name and I loved the name Nasir. The first time I met Nasir we fell in love and whenever we had visitation he was my baby. I took care of him. We did everything that I would do with [Kaseem]. And when Swizz did that interview with DJ Enuff, he mentioned that I made him choose between his marriage and his son, and I was like ‘What?!’

Wow.
That kills me the most. He was saying these things because these are probably the things he told her. Obviously something is wrong with his morals, but I don’t play with kids. Even now with Alicia’s pregnancy, I believe she deserves privacy. I hate hearing people wish bad stuff on her and the baby. I’m like ‘People shut up!’ This is a child, an actual life… someone who has nothing to do with what’s going on right now. I wish her the most successful, healthy pregnancy in the world, that child is going to be my son’s brother or sister and that’s the only way to look at it.

You’ve mentioned in the past that Swizz repeatedly denied having an affair with Alicia. Did he ever fully come out and admit to it?
My husband admitted to having his affair on Mothers Day 2008, six months after I found out. I didn’t sleep for a whole year. I had to take pills to sleep because I’d wake up in the middle of the night crying. I couldn’t even look at my son some days because I didn’t have the strength and I never wanted him to feel my bad energy. It was a battle. They are just now going public, but this has been going on for a very long time. I refused to really break it down for people to understand because there was no way I could go around not making [Swizz and Alicia] look extra crazy and I didn’t want to put that out there for my son. I didn’t want him to see his father as a monster. But the shit is deep.

What was the last thing you remember doing to keep the marriage in tact?
I did everything I could do, but I knew there was no working it out when he admitted his affair to me… he was happy about it. After lying about it for so long and finally admitting it I was like ‘I can’t take it no more!’ In the back of my mind I was like, ‘I have to fight for my family, this is my son’s father. We were supposed to grow old together, we were supposed to raise this baby together, we were supposed to do all these things, I’m fighting for my fucking husband. I don’t care who he’s dating, I don’t care how much money she’s got, I’m fighting for my husband.’ And then I realized… I can’t fight for him… he doesn’t want to be with me. I’m not going to win this one.

How do you fight for a husband?
I fought more for the family than I did for my husband. It wasn’t ‘I love you, don’t leave me.’ It was never that because that’s not even me. It was, ‘Let’s work it out for this baby. You can’t leave. I can’t be a single mom. Let’s go to counseling, we are a family.’

“And then I realized… I can’t fight for him… he doesn’t want to be with me. I’m not going to win this one.”

….. are you guys trying to rebuild a friendship?
We’re cool. I want to be the best we could be for our son. If my son wants us to hug, we’ll give each other a hug. Whatever makes him happy, you know kids like to see that. And I don’t hate [Swizz], there’s nothing anybody can do to me to really make me hate him. Hate is such a terrible word. It’s strong. I just don’t approve of what he did and how he did it.

Damn. So what helped you to finally let go of all the pain?
Pilates helped me so much that first year. For those couple hours of doing Pilates nothing else would matter because you are so focused. You’re learning all these breathing techniques and breathing, I swear, it cleans you out. It pushes out a lot of that negative energy. I also bought a lot of spiritual books on the universe and the laws of life. Once you start realizing that things really do happen for a reason, you accept it and stop fighting the world. There is one book called The Secret of Life, and it’s about letting go of false emotions. I realized that the pain I felt wasn’t coming from him or her, it was coming from me. I had to change.

What would be your advice to women dating within the industry?
I would avoid it completely. People in the industry… a lot of them are just that. They can’t turn off, they are always on, they forget who they really are and they think they are just this athlete or this rapper all the time. And they get a pass for doing foul shit, that’s just how it is. You don’t want to be apart of that. You need to be with somebody who understands when they are messing up and that can stop and fix their shit. Someone that doesn’t strive off what everyone else thinks of them.

Will you be writing more after Death of a Mermaid?
Yes, I’m actually working on a book of quotes. There’s also some film stuff. I’m in the process of forming a production-publishing company. And just got certified as a professional interior designer… looking to get a Pilates certification as well. There’s a lot going on. Women can get so caught up in love and totally forget about themselves, so it’s always important to have your own thing going on.

“Once you start realizing that things really do happen for a reason, you accept it and stop fighting the world. Women can get so caught up in love and totally forget about themselves.”

Wow right? Wow!

Read the rest of the interview on VIBE.com link HERE.

Mashonda on Youtube : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AAewZaIy6M

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