Getty Joanna Gaines at the launch luncheon for her book, "The Stories We Tell."
In less than 20 years, Chip and Joanna Gaines turned their Magnolia shop into a media and retail empire. Now, Joanna is opening up about her shifting role with the company.
“Right now, I’m wrestling with my role in our business,” she writes in her new book, “The Stories We Tell.” “Since 2003, Chip and I have given Magnolia every inch of us, and because it has become so intertwined with who we are, sometimes it’s difficult to make out where Magnolia ends and we begin.”
Joanna elaborated on the passage during a November 8, 2022 appearance on “Today.” She agreed with host Hoda Kotb that she was on “the precipice of some change.”
“I sense it’s coming. I don’t even know what it is, but I do feel like my heart like instinctively I know I’ve got to prepare,” the “Fixer Upper” host admitted.
As she explained, life is moving “so fast” as her oldest son prepares for college and her oldest daughter starts to drive.
“Magnolia – that feels like our first baby. 2003, you know. So, it is, I do feel like there’s change but I can’t even articulate it,” she continued. “I feel like, with this book, it’s preparing me for whatever’s next. But I want to be healthy in this season and whole.”
Joanna Gaines Reassures Magnolia Is Continuing
While her role may be up in the air, Joanna did reassure Kotb that Magnolia will continue. The brand has grown to include a magazine, home decor lines, a retail compound in Waco, Texas and a network.
“In a lot of ways, I feel like it’s just getting started,” Joanna said of the brand. “I do, I feel like, I feel like because she’s – I say she – 20 years old. But there’s still so much life. So I’m so excited about what she, it will grow into for sure.”
Joanna Gaines Sets Out to Rewrite Lies in Her New Memoir
Joanna’s revelation comes as she releases her latest book, a memoir entitled “The Stories We Tell.”
“We all have a story to tell,” according to the book’s description. “This happens to be mine—every chapter a window into who I am, the journey I’m on, and the season I’m in right now.”
As she explained on “Today,” as the daughter of an American father and Korean mother, she faced teasing and often felt out of place. Over time she accepted certain lies about herself, which this book strives to set straight.
“I felt like I was processing all of this alone, which now as a 44-year-old woman, I realize, you’ve got to say the stuff out loud,” she told Kotb. “You’ve got to rewrite those lies with truth. So getting to go back to those moments, even in this book, I keep writing toward the 6-year-old you see on the cover. Like that was me before I let the world chime in and I started believing the lies. For me it was really writing back to her to regain some of that lightness and that freedom.”
The “Magnolia Table” host added that she wrote the book for her two daughters – Ella Rose, 16, and Emmie Kay, 12.
As she added, “Get there sooner than I did. Because I really want them to know their value and their worth. Don’t let the world say otherwise.”
“The Stories We Tell” is out now.
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