Heavy/HGTV/YouTube Mina Starsiak Hawk and Karen E. Laine on "Good Bones"
Longtime HGTV star Mina Starsiak Hawk opened the latest episode of her “Mina AF” podcast by telling listeners she was “already crying” and feeling “like a complete lump of useless s*** right now.”
Throughout the 29-minute episode, the “Good Bones” star tearfully shared that she was overwhelmed with stress over not only the ongoing family drama with her mom, Karen E. Laine, who appears with her on the series, but also the financial fallout of their series ending soon.
Starsiak Hawk recently announced that the eighth season of “Good Bones,” which premiered on August 15, would be the last. Two weeks later, she stunned fans by revealing she’s estranged from her mom and brothers, who were also part of the show.
“My mom and I aren’t in a great place,” Starsiak Hawk said during her August 28 podcast. “My brother Tad and I aren’t in a great place. My brother William and I are in a kind-of-like-nonexistent place. It’s complicated without even being complicated.”
In early September, she told People that the drama with her mom included a “knockdown drag-out fight” while filming the first episode of the eighth season.
Admitting that the “majority” of people she hears from think she was wrong to publicly reveal the rift in her family, Starsiak Hawk said on her latest podcast that she tells the truth about what she’s going through in hopes it helps others feel less alone.
She said, “I’m sharing it all with you guys because, hopefully, my therapy helps be your therapy and we can all just kind of agree that we’re a s*** show together but doing the best we can.”
Mina Starsiak Hawk Says Watching New Season of ‘Good Bones’ Was Triggering for Her
When Starsiak Hawk decided with HGTV to end “Good Bones,” she expected to feel far less stressed without the filming and renovation schedules it required. But on her latest podcast, which she recorded on September 23, she said she was still just as stressed, if not more.
“I really thought that things would be less stressful once I was done filming, and I’ve been done filming for a while, but they just don’t feel much different yet,” she said.
She then said she caught an episode of their latest season while she was traveling. Watching in a hotel room and knowing what really went on behind the scenes with her family, she felt so triggered that it threw her into an emotional tailspin for days, she said.
“I by no means want to make light of people who have, like, real genuine PTSD, but the result of me watching the episode was just so much anxiety and frustration and stress,” she said, adding that she needed melatonin to get to sleep because her head was spinning and that she was still reeling the next day.
“I just f******, like, sat in it, sat in all the s****y things I felt about it that I saw,” she continued. “It brought back so much of the challenges and why I felt like I needed to make an adjustment in my life.”
Tearfully sharing that she is still “not comfortable being with some of my family members right now,” Starsiak Hawk said watching the episode brought up “so many unpleasant feelings” that she found herself “panicking,” dreading attending an upcoming family event and struggling to plan a birthday party for her daughter Charlotte, who had recently turned three.
“I just lost it,” Starsiak Hawk said, recalling how her husband, fitness trainer Steve Hawk, suggested that backing out of the event wouldn’t be a big deal. “I’m like, ‘No, it is a big deal. Everything’s a big deal. The world is ending. I’m freaking out. Nothing’s better. Nothing’s OK.”
Starsiak Hawk did decide not to go to the family event, which was being held at the same time she was recording her podcast, but revealed that her mom had texted her that morning, asking if she wanted to talk.
“On top of it all, I got a text from my mom this morning saying maybe we should talk,” she said. “We do not talk. We haven’t in a long time.”
Laine retired in 2019 from Two Chicks and a Hammer, the renovation business she co-owned with her daughter, according to People. But she has continued to appear on the show doing DIY projects and advising renovations through the final season.
Sharing that she knows many people think she needs to forgive and forget whatever has happened between them in the past, Starsiak Hawk said the situation was complicated and added, “The text kind of made me go back to our last communication, which was an email string from a year ago this month. And it just made me even more sad. And I don’t know a way forward.”
Starsiak Hawk said she thinks more distance from the show may help “cut all the work ties, financial ties” that have caused friction but that it’s still too fresh right now.
“I just feel like there’s still so much fallout from that still that is lingering,” she said, her voice trembling. “And it’s like trying to creep its way back. And I just don’t know, I don’t have an answer for you guys.”
Mina Starsiak Hawk is Worried About Finances With End of HGTV Show
HGTV / YouTubeMina Starsiak Hawk during an emotional episode of “Good Bones”
Another huge stressor for Starsiak Hawk is what to do next and how she’ll make ends meet without her HGTV show, which, she said, was her only form of reliable and steady income. Though she continues to flip properties, it can take many months to renovate and sell them, she said.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” she said. “Like, I don’t know what I’m doing with my life. I don’t know what my job is. I don’t know. Like, I’m doing things every day, I fill the day and more. I run out of time, but it’s just like, I don’t think I’ve figured out what the new goal is yet and that’s super hard.”
Starsiak Hawk said she was down to having two employees helping her rather than a full staff, but wasn’t sure how to ensure she can pay them regularly.
“The regular income I’ve had is from the show, and I don’t have any regular income anymore,” she said. “I actually don’t have income unless I do something to create it.”
Starsiak Hawk added that even her retail store was barely turning a profit. A week later, she announced that she was “heartbroken” that it will shut down by the end of the year, with a going-out-of-business sale scheduled to begin on October 26.
She also said on her podcast that she’s been going through the properties she and her husband own to see which ones can be sold off soon to make a profit. Meanwhile, HGTV told Deadline that it is developing show ideas with both Starsiak Hawk and Laine.
“If you’re feeling like a mess, I’m feeling like a mess, too,” Starsiak Hawk said toward the end of her podcast. “Hug the person that loves you. Kiss your kids and just try to feel good about getting up and making it through the day because sometimes, that’s really all that matters.”