Tina Knowles is opening up about her breast cancer battle, urging other women to be vigilant with their mammograms.

The mother of Beyoncé, 43, and Solange, 38, is letting the world in on her private journey with breast cancer, which comes in tandem with the release of her “intimate and revealing” memoir, Matriarch. The entrepreneur, 71, was blindsided last July when doctors discovered stage 1 breast cancer in her left breast. The news came shortly after she and Beyoncé launched their Cécred hair care line, while she was finishing writing Matriarch.

“It’s important not to slack on your mammograms,” she told PEOPLE while talking about the diagnosis. “I struggled with whether I would share that journey [in the book] because I’m very private. But I decided to share it because I think it’s a lot of lessons in it for other women.”

She continued, “And I think as women, sometimes we get so busy and we get so wrapped up and running around, but you must go get your test. Because if I had not gotten my test early, I mean, I shudder to think what could have happened to me.”

That’s when Knowles revealed she, herself, had missed getting her scheduled mammogram, saying, “I forgot that I didn’t go to get my test two years before I thought I had, because Covid came and they called me and canceled me and they said, we’ll call you when we start testing again. And I just thought I had done it. So you cannot play around with that.”

In Matriarch, Tina also shares how her daughters dealt with the news. Beyoncé, “took it well,” she said, “Staying positive, and I could already feel her mind racing, focusing on this as a task to tackle with precision.” As for Solange, she said, “Mom, we are going to take care of this.”

Knowles said that her bonus daughters, Kelly Rowland and her niece, Angie Beyince, also stood by her side, writing, “My girls became my team.”

Late last year, Tina underwent surgery to remove the tumor, along with a breast reduction.

“I’m doing great,” she told PEOPLE. “Cancer-free and incredibly blessed that God allowed me to find it early.”

Mathew Knowles, Tina’s ex-husband and the famous father to Beyoncé and Solange, also had a battle with breast cancer, being diagnosed with male breast cancer in 2019. He made the announcement to Michael Strahan on Good Morning America, and in the years since his diagnosis, he has recovered and become an advocate, namely for genetic testing.

Tina says she was not found to have breast cancer genes and that her family does not have a history of the disease.

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