Melinda Gatesis feeling extra appreciative for her three children this Mother’s Day.
On Sunday, Melinda, 56, shared a throwback photo to Twitter featuring her and her three children — daughters Phoebe, 18, and Jennifer, 25, and son Rory, 21, whom she shares with estranged husbandBill Gates.
“I love being their mother,” the mother of three wrote. “Whatever Mother’s Day means to you—a day to celebrate a mom, honor a memory, or reflect on your own resilience—I hope your day is a meaningful one.”
Melinda and Bill, 65, announced their separation with a joint statement shared on social media last Monday.
“After a great deal of thought and a lot of work on our relationship, we have made the decision to end our marriage. Over the last 27 years, we have raised three incredible children and built a foundation that works all over the world to enable all people to lead healthy, productive lives,” they said, referring to theBill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which they founded in 2000 and is now worth over $40 billion.
A source recently told PEOPLEthat a “combo of things” led to the pair’s split, and that recent timing reflects the fact that their youngest child, daughter Phoebe, is now an adult.
“It’s absolutely because their youngest child is graduating from high school, and the idea was that they stayed together through that,” the source said. “They limped through until their kids were out of school like a lot of people.”
Melinda French Gates and Bill Gates.Frederic Stevens/Getty
According to a recentNew York Timesarticle, the COVID-19 quarantine was a big adjustment for Bill and Melinda, who had spent the past three decades traveling around the world.
“Working from home — that was a piece that I think we hadn’t really individually prepared for quite as much,” Melinda told the outlet last October.
The Timespiece also noted that Bill and Melinda had been growing apart for several years now, partially due to Melinda’s struggles with being in Bill’s shadow. “I’ve been trying to find my voice as I’ve been speaking next to Bill, and that can make it hard to be heard,” she wrote in her 2019 bookThe Moment of Lift.
Their split comes nearly three decades after they tied the knot on New Year’s Day in Lanai, Hawaii after first meeting at Microsoft after she began working there in 1987.
source: people.com
