Under Construction

Because Living My Best Life Took a Little Work

Chrishell Stause

• Publisher: Gallery Books
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781982186265
• eBook ISBN: 9781982186272
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business Biographies
• Index: Business

For fans of Open Book and Sell It Like Serhant, a heartfelt, humorous personal memoir and relatable guide to overcoming obstacles, wising up about romance, and getting ahead in your career from the star of Netflix's hit reality show Selling Sunset. In this engaging, witty, and inspirational memoir, Chrishell Stause shares her story of living an unconventional childhood in small-town Kentucky marked by periods of homelessness, family addiction struggles, and dreams of one day being on a daytime soap, all while managing the local Dairy Queen. Through resilience and grit, she overcame obstacles and pushed past every barrier in her path to become one of the most envied luxury realtors in Los Angeles and buzzworthy cast members in reality TV.She takes us behind the scenes of Selling Sunset, reveals never-before-told stories from her life in soaps, and even pulls back the curtain on her highly publicized love life, offering insight not before shared. With her signature honesty and charm, Stause also gives tangible advice based on the lessons she's learned over the years and offers unique insight about how to stay resilient and positive no matter how many times life knocks you down. Under Construction is for anyone who wants to remember that no matter what happens or how, you have to get up, dress up, and show up, and walk back into the room stronger than ever before.

CHAPTER ONE Suck It Up, Buttercup

Sitting down to write this feels surreal. A publisher wants me to write a book? I have never been so flattered and terrified at the same time—and this is coming from someone who was asked to dress as Cinderella and dance the waltz on live TV, in front of millions of people. That experience had nothing on the experience of putting my life down on paper, for anyone to read. I have always loved writing and can remember several times being the kid whose paper was picked to be read aloud, which did wonders for my “cool” points in school. I have often used writing as an outlet after heartbreak, putting my thoughts and feelings down in those have-to-remember-this life moments. But the thought of other people reading your deepest thoughts creates a lot of pressure. That said, I’m grateful you’re here, and I’m guessing that if you are reading this (so sweet, I love you for life, thank you!), then you know a bit about me already. If you don’t know much about me, I’d say I’m a determined, ambitious dreamer who leads with her heart. I’m also a Realtor, a soap actor, and one of the stars of Selling Sunset, the Netflix show about luxury Realtors in Los Angeles. A lot has been written about my life over the years, and many times it’s coming from “anonymous sources,” but everything in the pages of this book is coming straight from one source—me.

You may have seen me on top of the world, and also knocked on my ass more than once. I don’t claim to have the key to success, but I can tell you what’s worked for me. Life so far has been filled with struggle and adversity, triumphs and victories. I haven’t figured out how to stay on top, but I have figured out how to get back there after a fall or two. I’ve learned to be down, but not out. Throughout the years, I have found ways to be mentally strong so I can get up, dress up, and show up in those pivotal moments where it’s all too tempting to want to melt into the ground and disappear. I am obviously still a work in progress, and just like any great construction project, sometimes you have to knock down a few walls to let in the light. Every remodel begins with a mess, and I’m certainly no exception.

When I look at my life now, I’m surrounded by mansions, millionaires, celebrities, and red carpets. A far cry from where it all began. The farthest cry. How far can a cry actually go? Okay, you get the point. But sometimes people see my dresses, stiletto heels, and carefully applied lashes and assume I’d be as out of place roughing it as Sex and the City’s Manhattan-loving Carrie Bradshaw every time Aidan took her to his cabin in the woods. I used to secretly enjoy it when people in Los Angeles and New York mistook me for a high-maintenance girl who wouldn’t last five minutes on a camping trip. If they only knew. But the fact that they didn’t meant I had successfully blended into my new city life, and my dirty little secret was still safe.

When people mistook me for a “Carrie,” I’d contemplate confessing that I actually missed a whole year of middle school due to our house burning down, forcing us to live in a tent, hopping from campsite to campsite. Sure, it was tempting to shock them with tips for finding the best spot to put up your tent (soft ground, but not wet; higher is better) or washing your hair in a river or lake (downstream is God’s water pressure, not to mention that you might forget about your chigger and mosquito bites for a short, heavenly reprieve). But instead of correcting people, I almost felt victorious that I had fooled them into thinking I actually belonged to the life I was living. One that entailed going to red carpet events with grand titles like galas and premieres and living out my dream of becoming the most glamorous thing I could think of as a kid: a soap star.

Even though I feel like I successfully manifested this life (and by manifested, I mean hustled my ass off), in no way did it come easy.

I remember having to work to keep a straight face when asked if I competed in beauty pageants growing up in the South. Me? The awkward brown-haired girl with the mustache and the rogue tooth? The one who worked at Dairy Queen in high school and dreamed of one day being on a billboard or in a magazine, despite those beauty roadblocks? And despite how people may perceive me, in many ways I’m still the scrappy kid born in Chaffee, Missouri, whose hospital I was born in isn’t even there anymore. If you’ve never heard of the town, you’re not alone.

Construction Tip

You can manifest all you want, but you also have to do the work. Good things don’t just come to those who sit around and meditate without a plan of action.

I love and adore my family and would do absolutely anything for them, but I’m embarrassed to admit that I felt ashamed of them for many years. It was a long journey of me slowly finding myself and shaking my own self-doubt and insecurities before I could finally own where I came from and speak about it. For many years a big part of me feared judgment, like I would never be accepted because I would forever be associated with a life I had tried so hard to deny and get away from. Even in the process of looking back at myself in photos for this book, it was surprising not to see a Shrek-like monster looking back at me. It’s funny how insecurities completely change your perception of yourself. Because now when I look at photos of that time, I just see a regular little girl. She didn’t need to be self-conscious simply because she was walking or talking or breathing. She didn’t need to shrink and hide. I wish I could tell her, Your mustache isn’t even that noticeable! I would also love to just tell her to pluck it while I’m at it! It took me way too long to figure that out. All it takes is one kid teasing you about a mustache one time in life to hit a nerve, and then that is what you are teased about for years to come. You never forget those moments, but hopefully you can one day look back and realize that it wasn’t all that bad, and that the person being the bully is the one who truly needs the help. I actually developed quite the retort for the times kids (I see you, Greg Chasen) would make fun of my mustache. I would say, “At least I have hair somewhere, where it counts.” The laughter of the other kids meant that I had just bought myself a little time to be left alone.

It wasn’t just my five o’clock shadow (which I was terrified of removing because I was scared it would grow back darker) that wrecked my confidence. It also didn’t help that sometimes I was one of the kids who didn’t make it back to class after a head lice check, or that I was on a free lunch program that meant you had to show a card at lunchtime that was a different color card from all the other kids’ cards. Those things are mortifying at that age. To avoid embarrassment I would either hang back and go last in line, or skip lunch altogether. My parents also chain-smoked cigarettes in the house and used kerosene for heat (it was cheaper), which made our clothes smell all day long. While other girls smelled like Love’s Baby Soft or Debbie Gibson’s Electric Youth scent, I smelled like an old ashtray. Not fun. And then there was the time I made the color guard dance and music team, but then I had to quit once my family saw the expenses for band camp. Not that band camp would have launched me to instant popularity, but it was something. I also couldn’t possibly admit why I was quitting, and in trying to pretend I had just changed my mind after a long audition process, I ended up with a few enemies. Imagine the girls patiently helping me learn the routine, and then I make the team, only to pretend I didn’t want to do it anymore. They were pissed, and rightly so. I wish I had had the courage to be honest back then, but somehow it seemed the lesser of two evils, so I stayed quiet.

I went by my first name then. My full name is Terrina Chrishell Stause. I hated every single thing about myself in high school, including my name. I once asked my mom why she picked Terrina, and she just said she liked it because she had never heard it before. She had a flair for unique names, which you can tell by the names of our German shepherds growing up: Nakia (Na-KIGH-a), Tisha, and Trippy. Trippy got his name because he was shaken as a puppy and he lost his equilibrium, which made him trip everywhere, but they were also 1970s hippies so I’m sure his name was also inspired by a few recreational activities. We also had cats named Kiara and Chakita, and a racoon named Bandit. So as much as I wanted to blend in growing up and have a name like Sarah or Jennifer, it wasn’t in the cards for me. I would later grow to really love my unique name, but we have a ways to go before that part of the story.

A few crazy stories are swirling around online about how my mom came up with my middle name, Chrishell. Despite what you may or may not have read, I was not born at a Shell gas station. That story has grown legs and multiplied over the years, but really my mom was having car trouble and she pulled into a Shell station. She went into labor while she was waiting on the car, and the gas station attendant was very sweet and calm, and he made sure my mom got to a hospital so that I wouldn’t enter this world next to a gas pump (and probably so he wouldn’t have to deliver a baby). His kindness inspired my mom to name me after the attendant, Chris, and so Chrishell was born, literally. My dad used to joke that it was a good thing I wasn’t born at a Texaco. I would have been Chrisexico.

When I went off to college it was time for me to shed my life as Terrina and start over. I had all new classmates who didn’t know my secrets. They didn’t know about the campgrounds or the ashtray smell or the struggles. They had no clue we were on food stamps and that I sometimes slept in an attic. As soon as I started going by Chrishell, it was the beginning of being able to embrace my personality and be myself—without giving up my past. I told my two best friends, Elly and Julie, whom I’m still close with to this day, but otherwise it just didn’t come up that much. I was constantly working and going to class, so besides work and exams, college conversations were usually about where we were going to go out that night. I did have one college boyfriend who broke up with me as soon as he came home to meet my family and saw their trailer. I think he saw me as “different” after that, and not as the type of girl who would have been acceptable to bring home to a no doubt beautiful estate. So because of those experiences, I felt like I had to hide where I really came from. Now that I’ve found success and become established it doesn’t seem to bring on as much judgment. In fact, the opposite. It’s become something I can be proud of. But back then, it really felt like it tainted how some people saw me. So I kept it to myself and focused on my goals.

It wasn’t as if my childhood was The Hunger Games, where I had to take up arms and fight for my life (well, not quite). My parents did the best they could, and in hindsight I’m thankful that I grew up learning how to be resilient and resourceful. My parents were freedom-loving hippies at heart. They once came to a Halloween party when they were visiting me in college and people thought their actual clothes were hippie costumes. Yes, they had their struggles with addiction and mental illness, and yes, I’ve forgiven them for those years they thought it was a good idea to join the Worldwide Church of God. Legally I can’t say it was a cult, but it sure felt like a cult, because they forbade members from celebrating birthdays and Christmas, and they would randomly make house calls to make sure you were still earning your way to heaven. Despite all of that, I focus on the positive lessons I learned from them. And there are too many to count. My parents might not have been the best at remembering to pick me up from my plays or ever making a track meet. They didn’t understand the point of running in a circle (and upon reflection, it’s a pretty valid argument), but I have no doubt that needing to be resourceful and street-smart at an early age was instrumental in getting me to where I am now. I learned to be very adaptable, and that helped me when auditioning for roles and needing to pretend to be someone else. It also helped me realize that the cult’s “gospel” was only based on the Old Testament. I remember telling my mom, “There’s a sequel called the New Testament, you need to read it.” My parents got into the cult when I was about ten years old. Reader, if you go to a church and you have a “leader,” instead of a pastor or rabbi or minister, that’s your first clue that this might be a cult. When we moved to Kentucky a few years after they joined, we didn’t have a chapter anywhere near our small town. The leader died and his son took over and drastically changed some beliefs, so my parents ended up walking away. Thankfully that ended my extra homework of Bible quizzes and weekly check-ins from church elders.

All these life experiences ironically came in handy later on, even when selling multimillion-dollar homes to Los Angeles’s elite, or needing to find my place in reality TV among one of the toughest social circles this side of 90210. I didn’t go through life with a sense of “I deserve this.” I’ve gone through it with a determination that no matter what, I would never end up washing my hair in a river again. There is also something very freeing about having nothing, so in turn having nothing to lose, and everything to gain.

Whatever your background is, it’s key to remember that no matter what life hands you, you have to suck it up, believe in your abilities, and go after your wildest dreams, regardless of what the haters say. It’s not always easy, and just like everyone else, I definitely have moments of doubt and fear and second guesses. I’m still that little girl from Chaffee with a rogue tooth. But I can always conjure up the sight of my house burning down or the feeling of clocking into a service job after school and know that I got this. If I survived all that, I can get through pretty much anything.

Construction Tip

Never forget where you came from. Pulling yourself out of a rough beginning will give you motivation, guts, and goals.

You don’t have to have lived the kind of childhood I lived to be resilient or successful, but believing you can do something despite what everyone around you might think is definitely a major motivator. It kind of comes down to knowing who you are at your core, not forgetting that, and not letting anyone—not bosses, strangers, or colleagues, no matter how intimidating their power ponytails might be—derail you from your dreams.

Despite all odds, my earliest dream actually did come true.

As a little girl, I clearly remember my mom and grandmother watching their favorite soap operas, or their “stories,” as they called them, on TV. Yes, growing up, there were times when we did have a house, and we had a TV, which was my dad’s prized possession. (Mine was a New Kids on the Block poster that may as well have been a shrine.) When we didn’t have our own home or TV, we’d watch at a friend’s or relative’s place, like my grandmother’s house, or my dad’s old boss Lonnie Roberts’s place. Mr. Roberts let us live in his house in Draffenville, Kentucky, for two years when I was in high school. In my memory that house was absolutely beautiful, even though it was probably just a simple house with central AC, a solid roof, and no fleas or pests. It was basically my dream home at the time. For my sisters and me, living in a regular house, as simple as it probably was, was the height of the good life. I would love to go back to those houses now and see how they hold up to my memories. Something tells me they’d seem way less grand than I once thought they were. At that point in life, I had no concept of six-thousand-square-foot hillside homes in Hollywood with Olympic-size pools, chef’s kitchens, and thirteen-foot ceilings. As a kid, if the ceilings didn’t have gaping holes in them, I was sold.

My mom and dad were a far cry from stage parents who give up their jobs, move to Hollywood, and ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Chapter One: Suck It Up, Buttercup
• Chapter Two: So I Was a Walmart Barbie
• Chapter Three: The Power of the Flip
• Chapter Four: Up Your List Price
• Chapter Five: Nice Girls Clap Back
• Chapter Six: Just My Luck
• Chapter Seven: Not So Cinderella
• Chapter Eight: A Good Egg
• Chapter Nine: Dancing in the Dark
• Chapter Ten: Bringing It Home
• Photographs
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Copyright