Tina Turner spoke about her relationship with her mother

Star status does not guarantee a quiet life without complexes and emotional trauma. Celebrities are people too, and they can just as well go through a bleak childhood, and then become victims of abuse by their partners.

Tina Turner, 81, has suffered a lot, including health problems and toxic family relationships that have lasted for decades. Her relationship with her mother can hardly be called harmonious.

“It wasn’t a good life. The good did not overshadow the bad. This was what is called abuse. This is reality. It’s true. This is what you need to comprehend and accept, ”said the singer in the new documentary“ Tina ”.

She announced that she was leaving the stage to live the rest of her life in peace. This documentary is a farewell to her fans.

Childhood trauma

She never spoke about it to the public – not in her autobiography I, Tina (1986), or in the 1993 motion picture What Love Can Do. But in the film Tina (2021), the singer decided to voice her most painful childhood memories. At birth, the girl’s name was Anna Mae Bullock, and she was the second daughter of a modest family from the town of Nutbush, Tennessee. She spent her childhood picking cotton in the field.

Tina Turner revealed that her mother, Zelma Bullock, was constantly subjected to domestic violence by her husband Floyd Bullock, just as Tina herself subsequently faced violence from Ike Turner.

“My mother wanted to leave my father while she was pregnant with me. She was very young and one more child did not please her. When I was a baby, I wondered why my mother and I were like strangers, and even then I felt like a loner. And then I became more independent and somehow it didn’t matter to me, ”the singer recalled.

Read also: Tina Turner wanted to commit suicide while living with ex-husband Ike: “He used my nose like a punching bag”

Relationship with mother

Tina’s relationship with her mother did not work out from the very beginning: “My mother didn’t love me, and it wasn’t even really hidden. Even when I was a little girl I knew she didn’t love me“. In the end, Tina’s parents separated, and the girl, along with her older sister, was raised by her grandmother for some time. And even when Tina returned to her mother, she continued to remain cold and indifferent.

“Mom was not kind. When I became a star, of course, then she was happy because I bought her a house. I did everything for her, because she was my mother. I tried to make her life as comfortable as possible. She didn’t have a husband, she was alone, but she still didn’t show any feelings for me. Even after I became Tina, my mother did not believe that I was capable of breaking out into people! She didn’t want me, she didn’t want to be with me, but she wanted my success, ”the Sun UK edition quotes the singer’s words.

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The singer broke the cycle of domestic violence

It took Tina Turner years herself to leave her own husband, Ike Turner, who was also prone to violence. But he also turned her into a star and made the dysfunctional girl Tina Turner as we know her now.

When the singer began the divorce proceedings, she asked not for property, but only for the opportunity to keep his name. Tina recently admitted that she suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) for a long time due to an unhealthy home environment.

Unfortunately, Tina’s mother was not on her side when the singer left the man who humiliated her for years. Zelma supported her former son-in-law, saying that he blinded her mediocre daughter into a star. But Tina still forgave her mother: “In spite of everything, I called my mother every day. And when she died I simply screamed and sobbed“. Alas, Zelma hurt her daughter even in death, making Ike Turner the steward at her funeral.