Sheinelle Jones Turns Lessons From Celebrity Moms Into A No. 1 Bestseller Ahead Of Mother’s Day

For Sheinelle Jones, the journey to becoming an author began with a simple question: How could she become a better mother?

The TODAY with Jenna & Sheinelle co-host recently debuted at No. 1 on The New York Times Advice, How-To & Miscellaneous bestseller list with Through Mom’s Eyes: Simple Wisdom From Mothers Who Raised Extraordinary Humans, a rare achievement for a Black woman in a category historically dominated by self-help mainstays and celebrity experts.

The idea first came to her when she was still relatively new at TODAY and trying to find her footing. At the time, she said, an NBC page she was mentoring asked what she would want to do if she could pursue a passion project.

“Honestly, I would love to interview the mothers of some of these folks that we admire,” Jones recalled saying. “You don’t hear from them about just how they did it, what they did right, what they did wrong, the things they did differently, and maybe they could share their wisdom with me.”

Her first “yes” came from Sonya Curry, the mother of NBA superstar Steph Curry. Jones flew to sit with Curry in her home, where the conversation extended beyond parenting philosophies into something more intimate. Curry later took Jones upstairs to Steph’s childhood bedroom, where trophies and basketball posters told the story of a boy’s dream before the world knew his name. What stood out was that Steph had gone on to compete against some of the players whose photos decorated his room.

“Before there were vision boards, we had high school bedrooms with posters,” Jones said. “I did the same thing. I had news people on my wall.”

The project began as a digital series for TODAY in 2018 before eventually expanding into broadcast. But Jones quickly realized the short television format could only hold so much of what these women were sharing.

During the pandemic, as much of the world reconsidered what mattered, Jones began thinking about what else she wanted to build.

“Some people started baking bread, other people started dreaming,” she said. “I remember thinking, I would love to be able to write a book using all of these interviews and write about what I’ve learned.”

After sitting with the mothers of Kevin Durant, Lady Gaga, Lin-Manuel Miranda, and others, Jones began to see a pattern.

Many of the women, Jones said, spoke openly about faith, resilience, heartbreak, and the private work of holding families together.

“For the woman who feels like she’s grateful to be a mom or a grandmother or an auntie or a teacher or a coach, but it’s just hard — you’re not the only one,” Jones said. “If you peel the layers and you look behind the curtain, they had a mother who was just doing the best she could, just like you are.”

The message feels especially personal for Jones as she approaches Mother’s Day while grieving the loss of her husband, Uche Ojeh, who died May 18, 2025, after battling brain cancer (Jones’ grandmother also passed on New Year’s Eve 2025) while parenting three teenagers who are grieving too.

“What I know to be true is they’re doing what I’m doing, which is we’re holding two things,” Jones said of her children. “We’re holding our heartbreak, but we’re also trying to honor him by moving forward.”

She looks and sounds polished on camera, but she is honest about the cost.

“I look like I’m operating with a full tank, but you can’t lie to your body,” Jones said. “I know that I’m not operating on a full tank. I’m heartbroken.”

Her children have also become part of the book’s emotional center. Jones dedicated Through Mom’s Eyes to them and says the magnitude of the moment did not fully land until they surprised her on TODAY during the book’s launch.

“I saw their faces, and I thought, OK, they get it,” she said. “They were proud of me, and that just moved me to tears.”

When asked what she hopes her children understand from watching her mother them, Jones said she is trying to model the qualities she wants them to carry: kindness, wonder, resilience, and faith.

“I think that’s our best bet as parents, to just move in the way that we hope our children would want to move,” she said. “And that they would be better than us, quite frankly, that they stand on our shoulders.”

That idea also shapes how she views the mothers in her book.

Some of the advice she gathered was immediately actionable. Sonya Curry told Jones that Steph once missed an eighth-grade basketball game because he failed to do his chores. Jones went home inspired, ordered a magnetic chore chart, and tried to implement the same system.

It did not last.

“My oldest was like, ‘Mommy, can we take this off the fridge? This is stupid. You’re never going to do it,’” Jones said with a laugh. “Because I didn’t even have the bandwidth to enforce it.”

Still, the advice that stayed with her the most was not about discipline.

“The part that I take to heart is when every single mom talks about how quickly it flies by, and you don’t want to wish it away,” Jones said. “We gotta slow down. We gotta slow down.”

That message feels even more urgent around Mother’s Day.

“I don’t need some lavish gift or some trip or anything crazy,” Jones said. “I just want to be surrounded by the kids that I love.”

With Through Mom’s Eyes, Jones is also beginning to understand her work not only as journalism or storytelling, but as ownership. She is an author. She is a brand. She is learning that business ownership and storytelling do not have to live in separate rooms.

“We can all take a piece of it and try to figure out how we can be our own best advocate and brand, and what that looks like in this new space,” she said. “I’m also learning in real time the power that we have, and our stories and our voices. And our support for each other has power.”

Jones is trying not to race past this moment. After years of dreaming, working, mothering, caretaking, grieving, and building, she is learning to sit still long enough to ask what comes next.

“I’m getting to know the new me,” she said. “Al Roker calls it Sheinelle 2.0.”

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