Joanna Gaines is a busy mom to five kids, on top of her hectic schedule managing her multi-million dollar company. While the former HGTV star opened up about stepping away from her hit series, “Fixer Upper,” in order to be more present for her family, the “mom guilt” stayed with her.
‘Mom Guilt’
Joanna sat down with longtime from Hoda Kotb to discuss all things “joy,” which naturally led to the conversation of motherhood.
“Mom guilt never goes away it’s something you have to manage you have to always work through,” Joanna told the “Today” show star during the Monday, September 7, episode of her “Joy 101” podcast.
The Magnolia Network owner went on to share a story about dropping her eldest daughter, Ella, off for her freshman year of college and breaking down apologizing for not being fully present for her childhood.
“I remember just crying a little bit and thinking, ‘Okay, this is the moment I can just like say I’m sorry for anywhere I wasn’t present,” Joanna shared. “For months what I was grieving was, I wasn’t home the whole time. Like I was a stay-at-home mom for a portion of her childhood, but then I grew this business.”
According to the “Shark Tank” star, she spent months worrying about her daughter’s memories of her childhood, and creating a narrative in her mind.
“We’re in the car and I just quietly start crying and I’m like, ‘Hey, I just I want to ask and you can be honest, but I also want to say I’m sorry if there’s any way where you ever felt like I just wasn’t there enough because I was working like, I’m sorry.”
She added, “[Ella] got upset. And she said, ‘Mom, are you serious?’ She’s like, ‘All you’ve taught me is I can do anything and everything.’ And so the narrative she’s built up over the years is not the mom guilt that I’ve been holding. Instead it’s one of strength and empowerment and beauty. And right there it was it was a life-changing moment for me that you just you need to talk more.”
Why the Gaineses Quit ‘Fixer Upper’
Elsewhere in the episode, Joanna revealed the real reason she and husband Chip Gaines decided to walk away from HGTV.
“I think what you do and what you have done and what I do and I have done is we sprint until we tip over and then we say, ‘Oh my god, what is happening here?'” she told Kotb.
Despite people in her life calling her “crazy” for walking away, with some saying “opportunities [only] knock once,” the couple were firm in their decision.
“I know you can relate to this. It’s like when you start realizing you’re living on a thing that’s now the intentionality is gone and you’re just showing up,” Joanna said. “That’s not why we want to like that’s not that doesn’t feel fulfilling. It actually feels as though we’re part of this machine that is like what’s the life here? And I would say that was our first pause of like we’re doing all this and and seeing great reward like this is wonderful but also never at the expense of like our like livelihood, our happiness, our souls.”
She added, “And so stopping in that moment was basically us saying it’s nothing is worth what’s worth it is like are we healthy? Are we good? Is our family good? That’s the most important thing. So that was really a very pivotal moment for us.”
Joanna added that it wasn’t until she began “dreading” her days at work that she realized it was time to hang up her tool belt.
