Heavy/HGTV Mina Starsiak Hawk of HGTV
Longtime HGTV star Mina Starsiak Hawk is hoping for happy holidays with her family, but she may have to show up late and leave early to keep the peace. That’s what the home renovation expert told Alice Fraser on the November 16, 2023, edition of her “Tea With Alice” podcast.
In August, Starsiak Hawk dropped several bombshells on her own podcast, “Mina AF,” including the news that her HGTV show, “Good Bones,” was ending after eight seasons.
Weeks later, she revealed that she was “not on good terms” with her mom and co-star Karen E. Laine nor with her step-brother Tad Starsiak, who regularly appeared on the show and got engaged in the series finale. Though the family pretended they were getting along on-camera, Starsiak Hawk has said they were constantly fighting.
With the holidays approaching, the Indianapolis-based home renovation expert shared how she plans to navigate the holidays amid her family’s ongoing rift and that, the way things are going, she does not expect to be invited to Tad’s wedding.
Here’s what you need to know:
Mina Starsiak Hawk Said She Decided to ‘Disrupt the System’ by Not Pretending Everything’s Fine With Her Family
Though fans and relatives have urged Starsiak Hawk to try to make amends with the family members she’s at odds with, she has stood her ground after what she’s described as years of unhealthy relationships with them.
“Usually in my family, we all suck it up and we just go to the thing and everyone plays nice and then talks sh** about each other behind their back,” she said on the podcast. “So I was like, ‘I’m going to disrupt the system.”
That included not inviting multiple family members to her kids’ birthday parties. But things have grown more complicated with the upcoming holidays. Starsiak Hawk said that while picking up her kids — son Jack, 5, and daughter Charlie, 3 — from her dad’s house recently, he asked her to at least try to smooth things over with Tad.
Starsiak Hawk said her dad, Casey Starsiak — who was Laine’s first husband — told her, “You’ve got to talk to him. The holidays are coming up. Are you just not going to come to Thanksgiving? Are you not going to come to Christmas?”
Starsiak Hawk told Fraser that she doesn’t want to sit down for a holiday meal “and pretend I’m okay making small talk with this person that’s treated me so poorly.”
On the September 18 episode of “Mina AF,” Starsiak Hawk explained why she was in such a rough place with Tad.
“My brother Tad said some really awful stuff to me and I’m sure he would say that I’ve said some awful stuff to him too,” she revealed. “But the most recent stuff he said to me, he can’t say it’s not what he said. He can’t say I misunderstood. It’s in text and it’s black and white and that was kind of my final straw there.”
“I have given (Tad) so many opportunities in life because of the hard work I’ve done,” she explained to Fraser. “I’ve shared those opportunities, and they were never owed to him. But he very much acted that way and treats me that way and then said some sh***y things that ended with ‘sucks to suck.'”
Starsiak Hawk told Fraser that things are so bad now that she doesn’t expect to attend Tad’s wedding to his fiancée, Anna Spiars.
“Right now, all he has done is tell me he is engaged and that I’m probably not invited to his wedding,” she told Fraser. “Which is fine because I’m (almost) 39 and I’ve been to a lot of weddings. I don’t want to go to anymore.”
Mina Starsiak Hawk Hopes Her Dad Might Intervene in Family Drama
After years of tension and heated exchanges with Tad this year, Starsiak Hawk said she’d decided not to take responsibility for fixing the situation and that she “laid it back on my dad’s doorstep for the first time,” telling him that as the “head of the family,” she felt her dad should step in to help.
“I would be happy to have some help in this situation, assessing it, solving it, making (Tad) understand maybe where he misstepped and how we can come back to a place of good,” she told Fraser.
Starsiak Hawk said she would rather not skip the holidays altogether, since her dad is 75 and she figures it’s “important to spend the holidays” with him because “they are limited.”
She told Fraser that she planned to ask her dad, “So what’s a way that my family can be with you and my stepmom and my siblings in a way that I don’t have to sit at a table and pretend I’m okay making small talk with this person that’s treated me so poorly?”
“Our Thanksgiving starts at 2,” she explained. “I’ll come at noon and I’ll help….get ready and the kids can hang out. And they can help decorate cookies, or whatever that looks like. And maybe I’m comfortable staying a little bit into when (Tad’s) there. And maybe there’s a point when I’m not.”
The day before Thanksgiving, Tad posted an Instagram video of himself driving with a “reminder of gratitude.”
“With Thanksgiving being tomorrow, I just want to set forth a gentle reminder to be grateful for what you have now,” he wrote. “Practicing gratitude doesn’t mean you have to be completely satisfied with your current life situation but can still take action to keep creating the life of your dreams.”
“However,” he continued, “you can still find gratitude in everything you have now even if it’s a breath of air or a simple smile from a loved one or stranger. Expressing gratitude is not just about the tangible things you have but the intangible. Once you show appreciation towards these details in your life, abundance will follow.”
It’s not clear where Starsiak Hawk has landed in terms of her holiday plans with family, and she did not mention where her, who is in the process of divorcing her fourth husband, will be during the holidays. But Starsiak Hawk is hosting her final holiday event and sale in early December at Two Chicks District Co, the storefront she recently announced will close at the end of the year.
And though “Good Bones” is over, Starsiak Hawk recently revealed that she is working with HGTV on a spinoff focused on the lake house she’s currently renovating.