Sara Demick
Still, she’s determined to make her pupils put in the work: “This isn’t ‘Oh, we’re going to make your house over, and your life will be so fabulous.’ They have to be committed,” she says. “But it was a lot of fun teaching them. If it’s not fun, it’s not worth doing.”
“I was completely burned out,” Curtis admits of her decision to step away. “There was so much time in those ten years where I didn’t get to enjoy it at all. I was stressed out.”
Making the hit show, for which she bought and restored old houses in Detroit, was often exhausting for Curtis as a young single mom. (She has sons Ethan, 23, and Harper, 5.) “Everything you see on the show, I personally bought, picked up, put into place, ironed the curtains, everything,” she says. And filming could be grueling: “It was so raw. And I’d wear the same clothes every day. I didn’t have any makeup on.”
Curtis with her sons in 2019.
Lauren Noess.
During filming, she went through acontentious, years-long custody battle over Harperwith her ex-boyfriendShane Maguireand became an outspoken advocate for therights of breastfeeding mothers. Her choice to continue to breastfeed Harper at age 3 drew criticism from some and became a flashpoint inher legal fight with Maguire. They finallyreached a custody agreementin October 2018.
As she returns to the public eye, she says, “I can’t lie and say that I’m not nervous about having a show back out there.” But this time she’s doing it on her own terms.
“I had a very chaotic ten years. I didn’t want to go down that path again,” she says. “I’m hyper-focused right now on remembering where I want to be, what matters in my life, what my priorities are. My biggest thing, always, is that life is short and I want to live it to the fullest. And I’m thankful our fans have appreciated that.”
source: people.com
