After the premiere of the final season of Good Bones, Mina Starsiak Hawk candidly shared a huge change that she made in her personal life. The HGTV star and her husband, Steve Hawk, stopped drinking alcohol after hitting “rock bottom.”
During an episode of her podcast, “Mina AF,” on Monday, August 21, Mina detailed her family’s history with alcohol consumption.
“I think in my family, it was again that term ‘functioning alcoholic,’” she said. “There was tons of problems. There was emotional stuff, physical stuff, mental stuff that was all ever-present and I didn’t really think anything of it because it was just normal.”
Steve lost his mom to stomach cancer in 2018 and his father six months later after he took a fatal fall down a flight of stairs. In 2020, his sister, Stefanie, died of ethanol poisoning. Her death was a wake-up call to both Steve and Mina, who found bottles littered throughout Stefanie’s home.
“Just seeing how the last however long of her life had been was so incredibly sad,” Mina explained. “And then the guilt with not being able to do something about it, like, ‘Well we should’ve gone to her house sooner. We should have made her go to rehab. We should’ve made her move in with us.’ But nobody knew.”
In the past few years, Mina slowly started to turn away from using alcohol as a coping mechanism for the difficult things she experienced in her life.
“It was the first three or so months where I was having to learn new behavior on how to cope with those feelings,” she said. “I like to stay busy. I like to drink a glass of wine and be relaxed again.”
Steve went through several rough patches of his own, frequently having drinks with the neighbors during the COVID-19 pandemic but finding it hard to know his limits. After welcoming kids Jack and Charlotte with Mina, his entire perspective and focus shifted.
“I realized that I don’t want to give my children a reason to not have a relationship with me,” he said. “Because I feel like so many people my age and the generation before me have these gap years in their relationship with their parents, or maybe they don’t even have gap years, but they just don’t have relationships or they do, but it revolves around alcohol or just all these negative things surrounding the behavior that comes with alcohol.”
Steve has been “completely sober” for the past two years and Mina has had only a handful of drinks during that time span. The couple recently announced the end of their successful series, Good Bones. When reflecting on the final season, Mina shared that she made the difficult decision to say goodbye to the show because she “just needed to switch it up.”
If you or someone you know is struggling with substance abuse, contact the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).
