“Fixer Upper” reality TV star Joanna Gaines shed some tears during her podcast episode with her mom entitled The Stories We Tell with Joanna Gaines.
Joanna, 44, invited her mother on the show for an emotional discussion about her past. Having an American father and a Korean mother, Joanna did not always accept her “halfness,” and discussed her difficult journey on Monday’s episode.
View this post on Instagram
During the podcast, Joanna became emotional and went on to say to her mom, “I don’t know that I ever told you this, 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.”
She continued saying, “The culture that was half of me as a Korean little girl, as a Korean teenager, as a Korean woman. That I felt that guilt and that regret. Like dang it, that’s my mother, this is her culture.”
Joanna also spoke of the time she spent in Koreatown in New York City when she was a senior in college.
She describes how visiting the neighborhood made her miss her mom and said, “I didn’t fully own who I was until that moment,” she explains. “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.”
As the podcast continued, she added that now she feels “so free,” especially when she sees her daughters embrace their Korean culture.
Joanna continued saying to her mom, “I just wanted to tell you mom, that I now am fully in a place of just complete pride.”
