Joanna Gaines got down to some real honesty in her last podcast about her early struggles to embrace her Korean roots. She sat down with her mother, Nan, for an emotional interview on November 28th of “The Stories We Tell with Joanna Gaines.”
The “Fixer Upper” star talked about the difficulty she had embracing the heritage passed down to her from her Korean mother.
“I don’t know that I ever told you this,” she began her conversation with her mother. “But I always wanted to say I was sorry for living in halfness. And not fully embracing the most beautiful thing about myself, which was you. The culture that was half of me as a Korean little girl, as a Korean teenager, as a Korean woman.”
Gaines previously described her father as half Lebanese and half German, while her mother is Korean.
Gaines went on to tearfully talk to her mom about how an experience walking the streets of Koreatown in New York City as a senior in college changed her mindset.
“I didn’t fully own who I was until that moment,” she said. “That I am this culture, this Korean history, this Korean story, my Korean mother, my Korean grandmother. That’s the richest part of who I am. And walking in the fullness of that really changed the narrative for me.”
“I just wanted to tell you mom, that I now am fully in a place of just complete pride,” she added.
She later posted a family photo on Instagram that featured her alongside her mother and two sisters. She wrote with that picture, “Chatting with my sisters about shared experiences growing up on last week’s podcast was sweet and somehow therapeutic. And on today’s final episode, my mom is joining me to share her incredible story. A story that I’m honored to be a part of. You can listen to The Stories We Tell on your favorite podcast platform!”
In her final podcast episode, Joanna Gaines spoke honestly about her early struggles to embrace her Korean roots.https://t.co/2hzJ4j3xsq
— TODAY (@TODAYshow) November 29, 2022
