Joanna Gaines Is Trying to ‘Balance Work and Family’

Audiences first became enamored with Joanna Gaines a decade ago when Fixer Upper, the home-renovation show she starred on alongside husband Chip Gaines, began airing on HGTV. Aside from her farmhouse-chic style, the interior designer drew raves for her practical, levelheaded demeanor.

But recently, the Magnolia empress has experienced some fundamental shifts. “I feel like I’m going through a midlife crisis!” Joanna, 45, shared on the “This Morning Walk” podcast on November 8. “I’m not super emotional – Chip is the emotional one – but I have turned into something he doesn’t understand now. He’s like, ‘You cry all the time,’ and I’m like, ‘I’m just making up for the 20 years that I have been unemotional!’”

While it might be a bit jarring for Chip, 49, as well as their five kids (Drake, 18, Ella, 17, Duke, 15, Emmie, 13, and Crew, 5), Joanna is embracing the change. “There’s so much healing in not holding things in,” she continued. “Now I just love crying. It feels good to feel.”

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Fresh Territory

Just what’s behind her emotional about-face? Career-wise, the upheaval has been monumental: In the past few years, Chip and Jo started their own Magnolia TV channel, where they appear in and oversee multiple series. They created product lines for Target and Anthropologie, plus opened a coffee shop and hotel. However, Joanna told The Hollywood Reporter, it was actually eldest son Drake heading off to college that opened the floodgates. “The last 10 years have been a bit of a whirlwind for us both, and I stayed very even keeled,” she told the publication. “But my kid leaving for college? That changes things!”

Different doesn’t necessarily mean bad. “I’ve always said I don’t like change…I have learned to exercise a muscle I didn’t know I had,” she shared on the “TMW” podcast. “My son leaves for college – that change is a different thing as a mother… It’s like holding sadness and joy in all one thing.”

According to an insider, Joanna and Drake try to talk as much as possible, and she sends him care packages. “Though her youngest is only 5, the situation has caused her to picture a world without her kids around,” the insider exclusively tells Life & Style. “Joanna is grateful for her busy life, but she does think her schedule has made her miss out on some family moments, so her focus today is about making more of an effort to balance work and family.” She’s also penciling in time for herself, even taking up horseback riding. As she shared with THR, “I’m looking at things very differently.”