Every year, interior designer Joanna Gaines scrolls through her camera roll to “clear the clutter” and “save the moments” that defined that year for her family.
Sometimes, if she’s feeling ambitious, she’ll even convert those saved moments into a physical photo album, which then gets left in a stack in her living room.
But that’s only if she’s “really on top of things.”
This year, as she was keeping the tradition alive, she said she came across one photo that inspired a newfound perspective on life, motherhood and the art of reflecting.
The photo, which was taken by her husband, Chip Gaines, was of their 6-year-old son, Crew, enjoying a day out fishing.
Joanna Gaines wrote about what this photo signified in the “Magnolia Journal Winter Issue,” which was released online on Nov. 12 and will hit the newsstands on Friday, Nov. 15.
“The picture shows Crew, his body bent over the boat’s edge, his face hovering close to the water,” Gaines writes.
“I’m thinking the sun must have been directly overhead because the majority of the snapshot is Crew’s reflection painted in the shallow water, his wide boyish grin staring back at him—at us,” she adds.
As she looked at the photo, she couldn’t help but admire the “curiosity” and “confidence” she saw in her son.
“His body language tells me he’s thinking about jumping in,” she writes. “His eyes, though, are where I pause the longest. They tell me that he is content, completely, with what and who he sees.”
But Gaines goes on to warn parents to not get too caught up in what they see—to “savor” those moments, but understand that they don’t always last forever.
“In this season, it feels impossible to imagine they’ll ever outgrow who they are right now. Unlikely, you tell yourself, that they’ll ever become anything other than wholeheartedly them,” she explains.
“But the impossible can become possible,” she adds.
It’s something she has already witnessed with her four other children, and something she credits to outside influences.
“We start to see ourselves plus who we think other people see; or worse, who we think other people want to see. Or, we simply start to notice that other people are watching, and the idea that eyes are on us can change everything,” she writes.
Over time, she says kids—and even adults—struggle to find courage and grow less confident as they learn that curiosity and optimism don’t always work in their favor.
But while it’s easy to let that “shadow” close in on your conscience, Gaines is learning to be “equally aware” of the shadows she carries and the ones she casts.
And that’s exactly what she’s teaching her five kids.
“In a world that can make it easy to lose sight of yourself, I want my kids, especially, to know how to find their way back,” she explains. “And when they look at the person staring back at them, I want them to know how to see—really see—themselves exactly as they were made to be.”
The photo of Crew was just a simple reminder to “feel grateful for the light” because without the light from the sun, her son would have no reflection to look at in the water, she said.
“Reflections, by their very nature, need light to exist. So that’s the best we can offer Crew, and all of our kids: a spot beneath the sun,” she says. “More moments for them to see themselves beyond our shadow. Beyond their own shadows that inevitably creep in.”
As for her and her husband, that means encouraging their children and “applauding moments of authenticity,” while also holding them accountable—but being “unbending in moments of unbelief.”
“And it looks like quiet mornings out on the boat, waiting for the light to break through the shadows, expectant for what it has to show us,” she concluded.
Crew was also the inspiration behind Gaines’ latest children’s book, “The World Needs the Wonder You See,” which was released in September.
While promoting the book, Gaines said she wrote it “as a thank you for all of the times [Crew] has walked me back to the richer side of life,” according to People.
Aside from Crew, Joanna and Chip Gaines are parents to sons Drake, 19, and Duke, 16, and daughters Ella, 18, and Emmie, 14.