Joanna Gaines has experience sending a child off to college, but something about saying goodbye to her daughter felt “different.”
During an appearance on the Today show on Tuesday, August 19, Gaines, 47, revealed that dropping her daughter Ella, 18, off at school was a difficult task — even though she went through the process with her oldest child, Drake, 20, a few years ago. (Joanna shares five children with husband Chip Gaines: Drake, Ella, Duke, 17, Emmie, 15, and Crew, 7.)
“My oldest son is now a junior in college, and I feel like, ‘Hey, I’m getting the hang of it every time he leaves. It’s not as hard,’” Joanna told hosts Savannah Guthrie and Craig Melvin. “But then my second, daughter Ella, left last week. So it’s still raw. I’m like, ‘Oh God, help me.’”
“She went farther and she’s my girl,” Joanna added, “So I thought, ‘Oh, I have this down with Drake. I already know.’ [But] it’s totally different.”
Joanna also noted that although she’s one of the most sought after interior designers in the country, Ella didn’t want her mom’s help when it came to styling her dorm room.
“She is very into design and she has her own unique style, so I stepped back and I was like, ‘You show me what [you want],’ and I let her do the whole thing,” Joanna said of Ella. “So, it was really what she wanted.”
Joanna waxed poetic about her kiddos flying the coop in a touching post via Instagram on August 10.
“They told me it would go by quicker than I think. That the days are slow but the years are fast. And darn it if they were right. This beautiful gift of time has roared past us all just like I was told,” she began. “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. “
Alongside a photo of packed bins, boxes and suitcases, she added, “To all the parents packing up and moving kids to new places, and to all those with years still to spare: hold them close, hold them well, and let’s all lean on each other when the time comes to hold it together.”
Joanna and Chip, 50, are not quite empty nesters with Duke, Emmie and Crew still at home. However, the Magnolia Network cofounders definitely savor family time a little more these days as they know what’s coming.
“Every stage of ‘growing up’ has been a cycle of change, then gain. So, for me, it’s really a matter of looking at ‘different’ in a healthy, exciting way, and being expectant for all these new moments and milestones we get to celebrate as a family,” Joanna told Us Weekly exclusively in March.
She added of her motherhood journey, “I had our first four kids in such quick succession, that honestly, their younger years were a bit of a blur. I wouldn’t change the way we grew our family, but when Crew came — as a surprise! — I was older, and I don’t want to say that I was ‘wiser’ but I did have these four older kids as living proof that time really does move as fast as everyone promises.”
Chip Gaines knows teens will be teens, but he’s still going to set boundaries on prom night. The Magnolia Network star shared the one rule he gave his and Joanna Gaines’ daughter Ella, 18, before her big dance: be home by midnight. “She blew past that,” Chip, 50, joked to Today in an interview shared […]
As a result, the editor-in-chief of Magnolia Journal said she has fully embraced her youngest’s childhood and moves a little slower than she used to.
“In the first few years of his life, I took my foot off the gas for the first time in what felt like forever, and in the years since, Crew has continued to break through my tendency toward busy and hurry,” she shared. “He is constantly reminding me to look up.”
