Joanna Gaines and her entire family are dealing with becoming a unit-of-five in the household after Drake's return to college for his junior year and Ella's departure to begin her journey across the country.
The Magnolia co-founder, 47, shares five kids with her husband Chip Gaines, 50, those being Drake, 20, Ella, 18, Duke, 17, Emmie, 15, and youngest Crew, seven.
After chronicling Ella's bittersweet farewell over the past week, Joanna took to social media to show one more moment of the tender bond that Ella shares, not with her parents, but her siblings.
She shared a photograph from inside her home on her Instagram Stories, a framed dried sunflower placed with a note that read: "I will miss you, I love you," from none other than Crew, a present for his older sister.
Along with the actual dried sunflower, he drew himself and his sibling as sunflowers themselves, signing with his name on the bottom and a heart beside it, a touching reminder of the tight bond all five kids share.
Joanna's approach to motherhood
In the latest issue of the Magnolia Journal, in a note on the topic of "embrace" titled "A Note from Jo: Love, Mom," Joanna opened up furthermore about her changing approach to motherhood after Drake and Ella's departures.
"Being in close proximity to my kids is the only way I've known to parent," she wrote, looking back on all her years of "princess parties" and "Nerf wars," and priding herself on being physically present for her kids every step of the way.
"My confidence as a mom is deeply intertwined with physical presence. I know how to read their faces. I know what foods heal wounds. I know how to stay up late. To be here when they need me," she continued. "I've had to refine how to show up for each of them, all being so different, but almost 20 years in, I started to feel like I finally had the hang of it…"
However, that changed when Drake left and more so with Ella, "whose heart was captured by a university even farther away than the one where my oldest, Drake, has settled." She mused: "What does embrace look like when, to me, it feels like my kids are a world away?"
"Experimenting"
The mom-of-five noted that she was working on switching up her approach to adapt to not having her two oldest nearby anymore, while still remaining attentive and "present," all things considered.
"For Drake and Ella, it might look like experimenting: care packages with their favorite cookies and surprise visits for an afternoon coffee," she added. "But it will also look the same way it always has: a listening ear, texts that let them know I'm here."
"Because the hope, I think, is that my children will know – no matter how far or near they are – that proximity isn't what truly connects us. Maybe it never was. All along, there was something richer, deeper, more lasting and meaningful that tethered us. The truth is we belong to one another, and there's no amount of distance that can undo that."