ENTERTAINMENT
Joanna Gaines Announces First Solo Memoir ‘The Stories We Tell’: ‘Messy and Winding and Beautiful’
The Magnolia Network star gets more personal than ever in her new book, out Nov. 8
Joanna Gaines’ latest project is deeply personal to the Magnolia Network star.
The designer and mom of five, 44, took to Instagram on Tuesday to announce the release of her first solo memoir: The Stories We Tell, out Nov. 8.
“Earlier this year I started jotting down memories and stories from my past, journaling about things I was still, years later, trying to work through. Half of my life is behind me and I’ve been longing for clarity about what I should carry forward and how I could hold this next chapter well,” Gaines began, sharing a shot of black folder, filled with pages, labeled with the text’s title.
“At some point, I realized I was writing a story — my story. The bits and pieces that shape who I am,” the Fixer Upper alum continued. “It was messy and winding and beautiful, and graciously revealed about a million wonders. Some of it broke my heart — and some of it pieced it back together.”
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“I took this picture the day I finished it — and today we sent it off to the printer!! It’s out of my hands and time to share it with the world,” Gaines explained, noting that she was “feeling a little bit of everything: nervous, excited, vulnerable, but mostly hopeful.”
“That any part of my story might shine a light on the fullness of yours,” she concluded the caption.
Unveiling the cover in a follow-up post, the front of the upcoming memoir features a smiling black and white shot of Gaines with the line, “Every piece of your story matters.”
“Jo’s new book, The Stories We Tell, invites us on an authentic and deeply vulnerable journey into her story — and helps shine a light on the beauty of our own — guiding us to release the weights that hold us back so we may live and share our story in truth,” its official description reads.
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In addition to Gaines’ new memoir, her previous books including, The Magnolia Story, Magnolia Table and Homebody, plus two children’s books, We Are the Gardeners and The World Needs Who You Were Made to Be, have sold more than 10 million copies to date.
Ahead of her book, Gaines and husband Chip will also star in their forthcoming show, Fixer Upper: Welcome Home – The Castle. In the eight-episode limited series, debuting in September, the pair will be tackling the total renovation of a nineteenth-century castle in their hometown of Waco, Texas.
“For nearly two decades, Chip watched and waited, persistently putting in offers whenever the castle was relisted—each one passed over for someone else, while very few improvements appeared to be made,” Joanna wrote in the winter 2019 issue of Magnolia Journal. “Chip saw the beauty and potential in this place years earlier than I did, but he never gave up, and because of that, we now get to make this castle beautiful again.”
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