Tia Mowry-Hardrict appeared on ET’s Unfiltered and recalled a time when she and her twin sister, Tamera Mowry, were rejected from a teenage magazine at the height of their careers because of the color of their skin.

“So my sister [Tamera] and I wanted to be on the cover of this very popular [teenage] magazine at the time,” Mowry-Hardrict recalls. “We were told that we couldn’t be on the cover of the magazine because we were Black, and we would not sell.”

Its been years later and Tia is a whole mom now, but she admits that she’ll never forget that hurtful moment. “I will never forget where I was,” she continued, “and I wish I would have spoken up. I wish I would have said something then. I wish I would have had the courage to speak out and say that wasn’t right.”

The actress spoke about her struggles with self-love growing up in Hollywood. “I would feel insecure about my hair because being young and being in this business, I never saw girls like me,” she explained. “I never saw girls that, you know, were embracing their curls, or I never saw curly hair being portrayed as beautiful.”

But Tia and Tamera have always been hair goals, and although she didn’t mention which magazine turned them down, it’s crazy to think that the outlet believed they wouldn’t sell when they had high ratings at the time.

But her experiences have shaped her to be the woman she is today, and she makes sure to feel her two beautiful brown children with words of affirmation.

“I’m always telling my beautiful brown-skinned girl that she is beautiful,” Mowry-Hardrict said, “and the same thing, even with my son. I tell him how handsome he is; I tell him, you know, he is smart. Because I know what it feels like for someone to devalue your worth, and I don’t want my children to ever, ever, ever feel that. And not have the strength, or the foundation, to not believe it. To believe that they are worthy.”