Joanna Gaines said 'extreme' measures helped her recover from feeling 'unbalanced'

• Joanna Gaines just published the spring issue of the Magnolia Journal.
• She wrote in an essay that she felt "unbalanced" last year because she was giving so much to others.
• Gaines said gardening, reading, and cooking helped, but her family joked her steps were "extreme."

Joanna Gaines opened up about prioritizing herself in the newest edition of the Magnolia Journal.

The spring issue of Gaines' quarterly magazine hit newsstands on Friday. 

In a personal essay published in the magazine, Gaines wrote that she was feeling "unbalanced" in 2021, as People reported.

"I found myself in this place late last year. Unbalanced by how much I was pouring out without being poured into in the ways I really needed," Gaines wrote, as reported by People.

It's not surprising Gaines felt off-kilter in 2021, given the year she and her husband and business partner Chip Gaines had. In addition to running the myriad of businesses they own in Waco, Texas, the Gaineses were filming a new season of "Fixer Upper: Welcome Home" and preparing for the cable launch of Magnolia Network for January 2022. It previously launched on Discovery+.

"I was learning that a well that's only ever knee-deep can't outlast a drought and that I had to figure out what it was that would pull me out of the grind and give me renewed perspective," Gaines said of the year's toll on her in Magnolia Journal, according to People.

Gaines went on to write that she decided to seek support from things she already knows bring her joy.

"I considered what I'm already drawn to, what I already know wakes me up and brings me life — nature, the garden, being in my kitchen, and the peace that meets me there — and I leaned in," she wrote.

"For weeks, I pored over books, threw my hands into the soil, and filled every surface of the house with jars for canning just about anything," Gaines went on to write, according to People.

Gaines wrote that she was so focused on caring for herself that her family was a bit taken aback, People reported.

"My family joked that I'd gone a little extreme, but for the first time in a long time I felt full, truly full," she added. "And at the end of those days, I was bursting with so much more to give. And really, that's all that I was after." 

Although the cable launch of Magnolia was a ratings success, according to a press release from Discovery+ shared with Insider, the release wasn't smooth sailing for the Gaineses.

Magnolia temporarily pulled one of its original series "Home Work" from its lineup after homeowners featured on the series alleged hosts Candis and Andy Meredith ruined their houses and cost them tens of thousands of dollars. The Merediths have since refuted the claims, and Magnolia returned the series to its lineup just three weeks after the scandal unfolded.