Mariah Carey is reflecting on her late mother, Patricia, with whom she had a complicated relationship. Last year, fans were shocked to learn that Mariah's mom and estranged sister had passed away on the same day, August 26. A little over a year later, the 56-year-old couldn't help but get emotional when talking about the woman who welcomed her into the world.
Mimi sat down with SZA for Apple Music's Flowers event at Jazz at Lincoln Center in celebration of Carey's album Here for It All on Wednesday, Sept. 24, when she began to talk about the main piece of advice her late mom gave her, and it's a lesson of manifestation. "She said, ‘Don't say if I make it. Say when I make it.’ So… I’m going to get emotional," she said.
Patricia was speaking from experience. Like Mariah, she was an artist who made a lot of her dreams come true, winning a scholarship to the prestigious Juilliard School for music, singing with the New York City Opera, and making her debut at Lincoln Center. "I was always around music since I was little," Mariah said at the event.
One word often used to describe Mariah is "diva," and it seems like it's something she got from her mom. "She was also a diva because she was an opera singer, and that's the definition of the word if you're gonna look it up," Mariah said later in the evening. "She would say, like, ‘So and so is very much the diva,’ and I had to learn what that meant on my own, but I think I'm probably very much a diva," the "Fantasy" singer continued.
Mariah described Patricia's definition of a diva as "A singer, a singing woman that's, you know — sometimes a difficult woman, sometimes they say that, and I don't love that because I don't think that's the actual definition." "It's a woman who sings, typically a soprano," she added.
Mariah and Patricia's relationship
Mariah has always been candid about her relationship with her mother. The word "mother" is used 260 times in Carey's 2020 memoir "The Meaning of Mariah Carey," which she dedicated to her children Roc and Roe, her ancestors, and Pat.
In one of her deepest chapters, Mariah shares how she just wanted to make her proud and believe her. "'You’ve always been the light of my life.' My mother told me this over and over when I was a child. I wanted to be her light. I wanted to make her proud. I respected her as a singer and a working mother," she writes.
"I loved her deeply, and, like most kids, I wanted her to be a safe place for me. Above all, I desperately wanted to believe her. But ours is a story of betrayal and beauty. Of love and abandonment. Of sacrifice and survival."
According to Carey, "Our relationship is a prickly rope of pride, pain, shame, gratitude, jealousy, admiration, and disappointment. A complicated love tethers my heart to my mother’s."
The relationship came to a head when she was hospitalized in 2001, when she was already famous. She explained that her mom called the cops on her inside the home she had bought. Police took Carey to an institution, and once she was released after several days, she said she believed that her mom and brother had set her up, as paparazzi were waiting in the woods ready to ambush her.
She believed her mother was enjoying it. "Her glee at the tabloid coverage was no surprise to me. Even though I was the child who didn’t break the rules (or laws, or bottles), my mother didn’t seem to have the capacity to fully celebrate me as I matured into an accomplished artist," Mariah reflected. "Sometimes I wondered if she couldn’t even tolerate my achievements. I often felt like there was an undertow of jealousy pulling on her smile, though I still included her in many of the major events in my life."
In an interview with Gayle King for CBS Mornings this week, Carey admitted she didn't know how she processed her mom's passing. "I just know that it was extremely difficult for me to navigate, and it was tough because I have always had an interesting relationship with my mother," she said.