The Stories We Tell: Every Piece of Your Story Matters

by Joanna Gaines

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

Who you think you are, matters. Alternately heart-breaking and inspiring, beloved reality star Joanna Gaines shares her personal story along with important lessons learned.

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

Imagine if all the worn-out, untrue, painful chapters of our lives started to quiet, and the beautiful, unique pieces of who we are were to rise. Imagine if the stories we tell brought us back to our true selves, back to one another. Imagine if they spoke of how we loved and lost and tried our best. How we saw it all, even the parts that hurt.

Joanna Gaines' 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.

We've all dropped anchor in places that suited us for a time: a city, a perspective, a lie we mistook as truth. This book is an invitation to a kind of life where you know how to hold what you believe—about yourself and the quiet worlds behind the people you pass—with gracious and open hands. To see your story as greater than any past or future thing, but for all the beauty and joy and hope it holds today.

It’s an invitation to take stock of the chapters you’ve lived—the good and the bad, the beautiful and the ugly—glean what’s gold, and carry only that forward. Let it slow your feet and steady your life-in-motion so you can see where you stand today from a new point of view. No longer through weary or uncertain eyes, but a lens brimming with hope.

—————

"The only way to break free was to rewrite my story. Because something would happen every time my pen stopped: It was like my soul was coming back to my body. Like the deepest parts of me that got knocked around and drowned out by all the crap I let the world convince me about who I was came back to the surface. And what was left was only what was real and true. I was, finally, standing in the fullness of my story. I felt hopeful. I felt full. Our story may crack us open, but it also pieces us back together.

We all have a story to tell. This happens to be mine—every chapter a window into who I am, the journey I’m on, and the season I’m in right now. Because this is my story, maybe you won’t always relate, or maybe it will feel like you’re looking in a mirror. Whatever we have in common and whatever differences lie between us, I only hope my story can help shine a light on the beauty of yours. That my own soul work will stir something of your own. And that by the time you get to the end of my story, you’re also holding the beautiful beginnings of your own.

A story only you can tell. And I hope that you will."
-Joanna

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781400333875
Publisher:	Harper Select
Publication date:	11/08/2022
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	2,230
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.10(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Joanna Gaines is the co-founder of Magnolia, a New York Times bestselling author, editor-in-chief of Magnolia Journal, and creator and co-owner of Magnolia Network.

Born in Kansas and raised in the Lone Star State, Jo graduated from Baylor University with a degree in Communications. It was an internship in New York City that prompted her desire to discover how she could create beauty for people. In a big city unknown to her, Jo always felt most at home whenever she stepped inside the cozy and thoughtfully curated boutique shops, which inspired her to open a shop of her own in Waco, Texas.

Alongside her passion for design and food, nothing inspires Jo more than time spent at home with Chip and their five kids—whether they're messing with recipes in the kitchen or planting something new in the garden.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 A Story to Tell 1

Chapter 2 When Fear Breaks 25

Chapter 3 Bridges 49

Chapter 4 Look Up 71

Chapter 5 To Hold and Let Go 93

Chapter 6 Deep Roots 115

Chapter 7 Healthy Things Grow 135

Chapter 8 Untether 159

Chapter 9 Piece by Piece 181

Chapter 10 Have a Fun 207

Chapter 11 Turning the Page 233

Acknowledgments 245

About the Author 247

Editorial Reviews

10/31/2022

In this touching memoir, designer and Magnolia Network cofounder Gaines (Magnolia Table, Vol. 2: A Collection of Recipes for Gathering) details how she learned self-acceptance. Growing up in 1980s small-town Kansas as the daughter of a white Vietnam War veteran father and a Korean mother, Gaines was a shy girl who didn’t see many other mixed-race families. In high school, Gaines and her family moved to Texas, and in the summer of 2000, 21-year-old Gaines interned at CBS News in New York City, where the city’s diversity encouraged her to embrace “the beauty of being different and the thrill of being unique.” The narrative foregrounds Gaines’s commitment to uplifting people (“I’ve come to see that a huge piece of my place in this world is to highlight passionate people who are doing beautiful things”), and she advocates for the power of empathy, or the ability to recognize “the burden someone is bearing.” As well, Gaines’s love for her husband and five kids is a throughline, as is her belief in moving forward through trying times (“There’s no space anymore for anchors that threaten healing”). Readers will be inspired by Gaines’s desire to find strength in self-discovery. Agent: Byrd Leavell, United Talent Agency. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

'An earnest testament to the healing power of writing.'—Kirkus Reviews

'Readers will be inspired by Gaines's desire to find strength in self-discovery.' —Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher

2022-09-14
The home-improvement TV star shares her story.

Co-founder of the construction and home-renovation company Magnolia and co-host of Fixer Upper, Gaines writes that she was motivated to write a memoir out of “a yearning for healing, for clarity, for steadiness.” At 44, feeling as if “the crescendo” of her life had passed, she felt a need to think about her identity and reassess her goals—a project she recommends to her readers, as well. “Getting your story down,” she advises, “needn’t be in pursuit of happiness but rather wholeness.” Her narrative is light on anecdotes; instead, the author imparts lessons and epiphanies that she gleaned from examining her experiences. “Fear, vulnerability, intentionality, perfectionism” are recurring themes. Half Korean, as a child, Gaines was mocked by kids “who made fun of the slant of my eyes,” inciting feelings of insecurity and shame that dogged her for much of her life. Through writing, she confronted that trauma and recognized how it led to self-limiting behavior, such as micromanaging. Motherhood features prominently in her story. Gaines had four children in five years, a period she recalls as “all a bit of a blur.” Pregnant again eight years later, she was able to spend more time mothering; her son’s rapt attentiveness to the world taught her something valuable: “I’ve let perfectionism win scenarios and busyness steal seconds of true joy. I’ve kept my head down when I should have looked up.” Perhaps that busyness is one of the “myriad” causes of the guilt she admits to carrying. She urges readers to pay attention “to the moments you’ve kept close,” to listen to their own story, and to be open to “a way of living that grows toward change rather than against it.” As she writes near the beginning, “our story may crack us open, but it also pieces us back together.”

An earnest testament to the healing power of writing.

Kirkus Reviews