When it comes to motherhood, Tina Knowles knows how to compartmentalize.
The Matriarch author, 71, and mom to Beyoncé, 43, Solange 38, and who she calls her “bonus daughter,” Kelly Rowland, 44, opens up to PEOPLE in this week’s World’s Most Beautiful issue about what it was like raising her talented girls in the spotlight.
Knowles, who once sang in a girl group with friends and dreamed of stardom herself, grew up feeling loved, but limited. “My parents never said, ‘Oh, you could be anything you want to be.'” Thus when she met and married first husband Mathew and they welcomed their own daughters, “I told my kids the sky’s the limit every day.”
Beyoncé, Solange Knowles and Kelly Rowland in Hollywood in March 2004. Doug Benc/Getty
They sure listened. Eldest Beyoncé, a quiet kid but naturally gifted singer and performer, spent her childhood in talent shows and girl groups, practicing at home in Houston or in her mom’s salon while working to break into the music industry.
When Destiny’s Child took off like a rocket in the late ’90s, it brought the whole family along for the ride. A skilled hairstylist and fashion designer, Knowles spent most of the 2000s behind the scenes creating avant garde looks for the Beyoncé-fronted super group, helping define the hit R&B act’s unique style, before implementing the same winning strategy on her daughters’ solo careers.
Solange grew up to flex her dance skills as a choreographer with the group before later setting out on her own successful solo singing career. “I always looked at my kids very differently,” says Knowles, speaking of her biological daughters as well as Beyoncé’s best friend and longtime bandmate Kelly Rowland, whom she helped raise from age 11.
Beyoncé and Solange as children in 1990. Paul S. Howell/Houston Chronicle via Getty
“All three have totally different personalities so I couldn’t lump them into one category. And I always spent time with each one of them separately so that they could feel special.”
As for what she got from her girls, “Beyoncé and Solange have taught me to be fearless and to not have hang ups. That’s one of the biggest things that Beyoncé has taught me, is to just take a compliment and say thank you.”
Solange, on the other hand, “has taught me how to just be fearless about dressing. She’s like, ‘Mom, go for it. Stop wearing a black suit every day.'”
Destiny’s Child with Tina Knowles in New York City in November 2001. KMazur/WireImage
Most importantly, her girls have been there for her when she’s needed them the most, which was last year amid her breast cancer diagnosis and treatment. “They were very supportive of me and very conscious of the fact that you have to get your mammograms on time,” says Knowles, who writes in the book that her girls, including niece Angie Beyincé, serenaded her as she went into surgery.
“I think we’ve always been very close,” she says, “but it renewed our commitment to spending more time together because life can be short.”
Looking back over her incredible life, as she does in Matriarch, Knowles says “My journey has been filled with, oh God, so many obstacles, so many hardships, but it’s also been filled with a tremendous amount of joy, love, laughter, dancing. Making women feel beautiful.” But above all, she says, “being a mother, it’s been the best part of it.”
Tina Knowles’ Matriarch. One World
Matriarch is available now, wherever books are sold.
For more on Tina Knowles’ life and loves pick up this week’s issue of PEOPLE, available on newsstands everywhere Friday.
