Joanna Gaines isn’t trying to sugarcoat her struggle over an emptying nest as two of her five kids have left for college.
The former HGTV star has opened up about her struggle with how to stay close to 20-year-old Drake and 18-year-old Ella Rose now that they’re no longer under her roof.
For a mom who built her parenting style on presence and proximity, Gaines admits she’s now learning how to love from afar.
In the latest edition of the Gaines’ Magnolia Journal, Jo admits, “Being in close proximity to my kids is the only way I’ve known to parent.”
Jo explains, “My confidence as a mom is deeply intertwined with physical presence. I know how to read their faces. I know what foods heal wounds. I know how to stay up late. To be here when they need me. I’ve had to refine how to show up for each of them, all being so different, but almost 20 years in, I started to feel like I finally had the hang of it… “
But now Jo admits she’s experiencing the same uncertainty felt by so many parents when their children leave home for the first time.
She writes, ” I’m already wondering how to hold this—them—well from afar. What does embrace look like when, to me, it feels like my kids are a world away? “
Joanna Gaines admits she has only the questions so far.
“Again, I’ve found myself without the right answers. Only a comfort that all playbooks start as blank pages and the revelation that maybe my pixie dust wasn’t proximity after all, but instinct, and a love so relentless that it simply never gives up.”
Joanna Gaines Reveals that Ella Rose Will Be Far Away
While Drake Gaines attends the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor in Belton, Texas about an hour from the Gaines’ Waco farm, Joanna reveals that her 18-year-old daughter Ella’s “heart was captured by a university even farther away than the one where my oldest, Drake, has settled.”
While some media outlets have reported that Ella is attending Parsons School of Design in New York City, the Gaines have never revealed where she is going to school.
Joanna’s Instagram posts about her daughter’s departure have focused more on the emotion, showing suitcases and a white stuffed cow at the foot of the stairs at the family’s Waco, Texas farmhouse. The caption simply reads, “Our little girl, all grown up. ✨🙏🏼🥹 #headedtocollege“
Another post showing an upstairs bedroom with sloped ceilings and a pile of boxes and containers reads “My oldest son left for his third year of college while my oldest daughter packs for her first year across the country.
This season already feels like one big, breathless surrender. Lord, how do I hold them close while also letting go? Help me to embrace change with a heart filled with hope for the part I know to be truer than the rest—my kids and I may have been made for each other, but I also believe they were made for more. More experiences, more knowledge, more growing than could ever happen within our walls.”
Joanna Gaines’ Longing For Togetherness Inspired a Home Renovation
Joanna Gaines has posted videos and pictures of a number of momentous family occasions gathered around the table in the family kitchen, including the Gaines’ last supper before Drake headed back to college, in the new Magnolia Journal she reveals that she and husband Chip Gaines have added a massive dining room on to their Waco farm.
And Jo’s desire for togetherness is what inspired the space.
Jo writes that an “image of all of us in one room at one long table—maybe two—face to face and shoulder to shoulder” popped into her head.
Jo writes, “I imagined our five kids with families of their own and all the memories that might await in a choice to make space for more.”
Four years after that dream began, the beautiful dining room is done and hosting large extended family gatherings on holidays.
And it’s doing just what Jo hoped it would do. She writes, “This Thanksgiving will be our second year to gather here, and every time we all settle into our seats at the table, I’m filled with gratitude for the space, the beauty it brings to our home, and the people it holds. Mostly, I love what it says: Whether today or tomorrow or years down the road, in our home, there is always room for more.”
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Joanna Gaines Says She’s ‘Without Answers’ As Kids Leave for College