More than a decade after finally meeting her birth mother, Debbie Rowe, Michael Jackson’s daughter Paris is speaking out about the event.
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While appearing on the Call Her Daddy podcast this week, Jackson recalled that she first asked about her mother when she was a preteen.
“You know, eventually, I remember kind of asking about it when I was probably around like 10 or 11,” she said. “And the answers I got were sufficient to me. Just like, ‘Oh, like, what’s her name?’ And I got told her name, and I’m like, ‘All right, cool.'”
Jackson dropped the subject and didn’t talk about her mother for a few years. She eventually reached out to Rowe. “We connected when I was about 15, and then really started getting closer towards the end of my teens.”
Reflecting on her emotions during the meeting with Rowe, Jackson said the encounter was actually normal.
“I remember coming downstairs, and she was in the living room with my grandma,” she recalled. “I came in. I was just like, ‘Hey, Mom,’ and she was like, ‘Hi.’ I sat down. We talked for a second. Then we went out for the day and just hung out.”
Speaking about their mother-daughter connection, Jackson said, “She’s a Sag[ittarius], so she’s got the fire. I’m an Aries, I got the fire… We’re very similar.”
Jackson Said She Tries Not to Have Expectations For Others
Meanwhile, Jackson noted that she has learned not to have expectations of other people.
“I think what’s really cool about my process, just in general, in all things, is learning how expectations kind of f— us up,” she explained. “And if I walk into a relationship with expectations, [I’m] probably gonna end up being maybe disappointed or frustrated or irritated or resentment will be born or something, you know.”
Jackson then said, “When I walk into something, and I don’t have expectations, it creates this really cool space for something organic to just blossom.”
Paris and her older brother Prince are the children of Rowe and Jackson. The late pop icon’s youngest son, Bigi, was born through surrogacy.
Jackson met Rowe while she was an assistant at the singer’s dermatology office. They married in 1996. Rowe gave birth to Prince in 1997 and Paris in 1998. Following the couple’s 2000 divorce, Rowe gave Jackson full custody of the children.
Paris and her mother had an on/off estrangement for years before reconciling.