‘Good Bones’ Star Mina Starsiak-Hawk Addresses Mom Shaming Trolls: ‘You Have to Take the Good With the Bad’ (Exclusive)

Rickety roofs, bug-infested walls, and rotted floors are no match for Good Bones star, Mina Starsiak-Hawk as fans have seen in countless home renovations on her show since 2016. But with the HGTV star blossoming in popularity, and now sharing much of her life and chapters of motherhood on social media, it opens the Indianapolis native up to criticism and unwarranted opinions on parenting and her IVF journey — something the soon-to-be mother-of-two tells PopCulture.com exclusively she tackles compassionately and with mindfulness.

“I think, for the most part, people mean well. Sometimes the way they say things, [it] just comes across ignorant. I generally just try to give people the benefit of the doubt,” Starsiak-Hawk told PopCulture, adding how a lot of the remarks are directed to how she should or should not parent her son, Jack, whom she welcomed Aug. 8, 2018. “A lot of them are trying to help, and some of them just say stuff in dumb ways. The thing is, when we did the show, we made the choice — my life is available for public commentary now. You have to take the good with the bad, and thankfully it’s overwhelmingly positive. Then there are a couple of people that are like, ‘You’re doing this wrong, or Jack is going to die because you fed him a piece of popcorn.’ It’s very little of the latter, which is nice.”

Starsiak-Hawk adds how it “matters how people say things, whether or not they can be heard enough” as she shares the instance of a woman who most courteously asked her about the freckles on her lips with concern over a rare disease called Peutz-Jeghers. “She was like, ‘Do you want to be tested, I can totally do it? I just wanted to share the information, because you’re a high-risk category, because of your a gender.’ […] The way she said it was super reasonable [and] I was like, ‘Oh, that’s probably not what it is, but I have an appointment with a dermatologist.’”

With Season 5 premiering this Tuesday, June 9 at 8 p.m. ET on HGTV, Good Bones is heading in a different direction this year in both style and sentiment with the show spotlighting a more personal side as Starsiak-Hawk shares her emotional IVF journey that results in a second pregnancy with husband, Steve Hawk. The addition of her life alongside the chic and sophisticated renovations comes with her son Jack, and husband Steve making more of an appearance on the series, which she admits she absolutely loves seeing.

“I really like it! Obviously, Jack’s a character,” she laughed. “The production team is his second family, he’s grown up around them. He likes to go places with me and being in the scenes, and he’s just a ham. Until he’s old enough to be like, ‘No, I don’t want to go to work with you today.’ ‘Cool. Then you don’t have to go.’ But it’s nice having Steve a little bit more involved too because I think he knows, I worked really hard and he tells me all the time how proud he is of me.”

Starsiak-Hawk shares how her husband understood the scope of shooting a series when they filmed the episode in Season 1 at her dad’s house. “That was the first time [Steve] said to me like, ‘Oh, okay, I really get what you do now. It’s intense, it’s weird, and it’s a lot of hard work.’ It’s nice having that understanding. More on Steve’s part — it’s just nice having him around. When he’s been good, we like each other. We’re lucky,” she laughed.

Good Bones Season 5 premieres at a special time on June 9 at 8 p.m. ET on HGTV before the OWN Town Hall, airing across all of Discovery’s networks at 9 p.m. ET. Fans can tune into Good Bones every Tuesday at 9 p.m. ET following this event. Stay tuned to PopCulture.com for more with Starsiak-Hawk, including what fans can expect from the new season and what she really thinks of her mom’s retirement. For all your reality TV coverage and more, follow us on Twitter @PopCulture.com.