May 17, 2022 • 45 mins
You probably know Melissa Gilbert best from her time playing Laura Ingalls for nine seasons on the classic NBC television show, “Little House On the Prairie.” She’s done a lot since then – she’s continued to act, tried her hand at directing, served as the president of the Screen Actors Guild, and even briefly ran for Congress. But a dozen or so years ago, she left her native Los Angeles to live with her husband, the actor and director Timothy Busfield, in rural Michigan and eventually ended up settling in a rustic, fixer-upper cottage in the Catskills Mountains. It was a pretty radical lifestyle change for Melissa and it sparked a number of realizations about her old life – and the way she wants to live now. For this episode of Next Question, she sits down with Katie to talk about this new phase of her life, the challenges – and rewards – of growing older, and her new book, “Back to the Prairie.”
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hey all, you cool cats and kittens. It's Katie Curic
and this is a bonus episode of Next Question. You
probably know Melissa Gilbert best from her time playing Laura
Ingalls for nine seasons on the classic NBC show Little
House on the Prairie. What are you doing up there?
What does it look like I'm doing? Uh huh. You'll
(00:27):
come down here this minute and get yourself off your school.
You can, Laura, I'm coming, I'm coming. Well. Melissa has
done a lot since then. She's continued to act, tried
her hand at directing, served as the president of the
Screen Actors Guilled, and even briefly ran for Congress. But
in recent years she made a decision to start a
(00:49):
new phase of her life far away from Hollywood. She
left her native l A to live with her husband,
the actor and director Timothy Busfield, in rural Michigan, and
eventually ended up settling in a rustic fix her upper
cottage in the Catskill Mountains. It was a pretty radical
lifestyle change for Melissa, and it sparked a number of
(01:10):
realizations about her old life and the way she wants
to live now. She writes all about it in her
new book Back to the prairie. We had a really
fun conversation about everything from her decision to lose the
botox to how she found love later in life. I
hope you'll enjoy our chat as much as I did.
(01:33):
So you are keeping busy, you are still writing, You're
still doing a ton of things. But we're here to
talk about your book, and I know this one, this
is not your first, but it concentrates on the last
dozen years of your life. But first I just want
to catch people up on some of the things that
(01:53):
happened earlier in your life, Melissa. Because you were adopted,
you have such a fascinating life. You've lived such an
interesting life. You were adopted the day after you're born.
Your dad was an actor and comedian. Your mom was
a dancer and actress, was becoming a performer, getting into
(02:16):
show biz. As they say, kind of a foregone conclusion
given your background. I think so. I think that my
family was probably really lucky to have adopted someone with
the blood line of a Carney. Also, I mean I
was sort of born I was born with jazz hands,
(02:37):
so it was in me, and then it was nurse
purtured even more by this family of incredible entertainers. I
mean going back to my father in his youth started
out as an acrobat in the circus as a child
with Ringling brothers. So that's really how the evolution started.
So I like to think I landed in exactly the
(02:58):
right place. I only think that there's something to be
said for show business being in your blood. I just
interviewed Jennifer Gray about her book and her grandfather, Joel
Gray's father was also an entertainer. He was like a
borsch belt comedian, and um, you know, there is something
about growing up in that environment, isn't there that just
(03:21):
infuses you with this god a dance feeling. Right. Yes,
And in my family, it's also multi generational too. It's
not just my father and my mother and me my
father's parents. My father's father was an Irish vaudevillian and
his mother was a French aerialist, and my mother's mother
(03:43):
was a beauty queen, and my mother's father was a
comedy writer, started out as a stand up comic and
created The Honeymooners. So it's definitely something that was just
a given. I mean, when I as a teenager announced
to the family that I wanted to go to medical school,
everybody went, what a doctor? Can't you just play one
on television? It's kind of the opposite what a normal
(04:08):
family would say. Sometimes so a showbiz household. Not always,
but sometimes it comes with a bit of chaos. You
write about your mom being married several times, your dad
was married a believe it or not thirteen times, and
you have to wonder how that UH informed your view
(04:31):
of marriage, relationships, et cetera. How did it. I don't
know that I was very good at relationships for a
really long time. I think, um, I think that well clearly,
having been married and divorced, or being divorced twice and
now married for a third time, same goodness, I'm in
(04:51):
a much better place now after you know, years of growth,
years of walking through these horrible things, decades of therapy
of five ending a way to live a really comfortable
and peaceful life. But it wasn't always that way. And
I don't necessarily know that I chose. I know that
I didn't choose easy relationships or people that I knew
(05:14):
I would have easy relationships. I definitely chose the more
challenging uh fellas, and it ended up being a lot
to deal with and I finally reached a point, you know,
in my my later years in my late forties, where
I went, what am I doing? I'm I'm sort of
bending myself into being someone I'm not for, someone who
(05:36):
I don't necessarily know that I really should be with.
And it was It's a hard it's a hard realization,
but it's a really important one because going into my
marriage with Tim, more than knowing what I do want,
I know what I don't want, and that's a really
big deal. More with Melissa Gilbert right after this, in
(06:07):
your book, you talk very honestly about the mistakes you've
made or the marriages that didn't work, and you were
particularly candid about your second marriage to Bruce brockx Lightner,
who I remember when Uh he was television star. He
hasn't done that much lately as far as I know,
(06:28):
but I could be wrong about that. Is that, Um,
I think he's he has a series on on on
I think it's on the Lifetime Palmar channel, one of
the two. But he's he's one of those constantly working actors,
which is great. Yeah, And but you you write about him,
and you go into great detail about sort of this
(06:49):
aha moment you had. I think many relationships have that
moment when something clicks or snaps, and it was when
you had surgery and and back surgery specifically, and he
suggested that you take a car home that he couldn't
pick you up from the hospital. And what what clicked
(07:13):
for you when that happened, You know it is I
was very accustomed through that entire relationship to taking care
of everyone, and and and and I've done this my
whole life before this, but it really it multiplied during
that marriage to taking care of everyone to the detriment
of myself. Like if everyone got sick and I got
sick and I climbed into bed, he gets sick, and
(07:35):
then I'd have to get out of bed to make
sure he was taken care of or whatever was going on.
It just I it was just an autopilot thing for me.
And it's something I also did, you know, being a
working child actor too. There's no time to be sick,
there's no time to have broken bones. I worked through
all that stuff as a kid, so I was very
good at the show must go on, therefore, life must
go on. And after I broke my back and had
(08:00):
urgery to repair it and was ready to go home,
was being released. I was being released from the hospital
and going home to home nurses with a walker and
all the stuff that I needed. And I called him
and he said he didn't want to drive all the
way to the hospital, that he just wanted me to
call a friend or take a car. I hung up
the phone and I went, I mean I literally was
(08:20):
like it was like a lightning bolt. I went that
that's that's actually wrong. It's not and why is it?
Why am I in this position right now? What is
it about me that allowed me to be in a
marriage where it's given that that I would just say, okay,
call I'll call a town car to drive me home
after having my broken back fixed. And I thought, this
(08:44):
is uh, this is this is this is not what
marriage is supposed to be. Like I could do this
on my own. If I didn't have a partner. I
we would be a given that I would have arranged
for someone to pick me up. It would be a
given that I would arrange to have all these people
take care of me. It would be a given that
I would have arranged to have food dropped off for
the family and for me um And the fact that
(09:05):
I had to do that while having a partner led
me to pause and go, this is this is not
the partnership I need at this point in my life.
I can do this on my own, and I'd rather
just do it on my own and know that I'm
relying on myself entirely. And that was sort of the
beginning of of the end. And the more time went on,
(09:26):
the more I realized how far apart we really were
and what we either of us wanted in a marriage
and in life. And that was sort of the real
If you'll forgive the pun straw that broke the camel's back,
you have a great, meat cute story about Tim in
the book, and how that happened. Tell us that story. Um,
(09:50):
I was. I was going out with my gay best
friend and a bunch of his friends. We were going
uh disco dancing in Los Angeles at the time, I
was living in Los Angeles. Still. We were going out
to disco night at a club called oil Can Harry's
in the San Fernando Valley and the goal was to
meet up at this one restaurant that had board games.
(10:12):
We're going to have dinner and play board games and
then go and the restaurant had closed permanently. So my
friend Daniel and I were driving around and there was
this little sort of strip mall that had a bar
in it that I knew about, and I said, well,
why don't we go there and just kill some time.
It's right across the street. Everyone can come there. We
walked in the place that just opened. There was no
one there, and as soon as we walked in, my
(10:35):
friend Danny said, I left my phone at your house,
which was ten minutes away, and I said, we'll go.
So now I'm alone in a bar, which never ever
in in a strip mall, in a strip mall, in
l a off of bar room, no, sitting there with
my Cranberry Club soda by myself and I the there's
(10:57):
a velvet curtain at the door, and the and opens,
and this guy walks past me in his big sort
of coat with a baseball cap on, and he has
a slice of pizza on a paper plate in one
hand and a backpack and he puts it all down
and he sits down and he orders a mescal, which
makes me laugh, and I just mess gal is just
such a specific thing for someone to drink. And I
(11:20):
looked and I saw his profile and I thought, oh
my gosh, that's Tim Busfield. And we had just become
friends on Facebook, um, which is sort of random. And
I've met him a couple of times before, but I
never really had any long conversations. And you have to know,
I'm really shy. I don't tend to go up to people,
even if I've known them for years or worked with
(11:43):
them years and years ago. I'm always afraid someone's going
to not know who I am, and just kind of,
you know, I just don't want to do it. And
I somehow screwed up the courage to say, hey, Tim,
and he turned and he looked at me, and I said,
Melissa Gilbert and he went, oh, and I said, we
just became friends on Facebook. So we stayed way apart
(12:03):
from each other in this bar, like five stools apart,
talking and then he moved one closer, and then I
moved one closer than that continued till we were side
by side, and I think, I don't know, we must
have been talking for hours, because they turned around and
my friend Danny was there and all of his friends
had been standing there for at least two hours watching
(12:24):
this whole thing. And I didn't even know that they
were there, and it was time to go, and UM,
and I kept looking at them, going what am I doing?
I've lost my mind? And they're you know, begging me
on and Tim decided to leave, and he got up
to go and had his way out. He grabbed my
ear lobe and we had exchanged phone numbers. He said,
(12:46):
I'm going to go, and I looked and I said, yes,
good idea, quit while you're ahead. And he left. He
grabbed your earlobe. We're not grabbed, I mean like gently
grabbed your earlobe. He fondled my earlobe. Sounds so gross.
He tugged my earlobe. There you go, gently tug Yeah,
(13:06):
kind of like Carol Burnett, Yes, exactly. It was kind
of just a little like tickle and UM. The next
morning or late morning, because I went out late dancing
with my friends. Um, the next morning, I texted him
do you want to meet for brunch? Right as he
was texting me saying do you want to meet for brunch?
So we met for brunch, and I don't think we've
(13:28):
been apart more than I think the longest we've been
a part of five days since then, in ten years
and it sounds like you're really happy. I am. I am.
It's I had a friend many many years ago, when
I was going through relationship agony in my twenties, who said,
you know, there's there's easier relationships out there. And I
(13:52):
never thought i'd be a person that had an easier relationship.
And I do. And there's not a day that goes
by that I'm not grateful that. Um. It's that really
virtually nothing in my life is a struggle anymore. It's
very peaceful, it's very calm, it's very soothing, um And
and most importantly, it's a partnership. We consult each other
(14:14):
about everything, We share everything, and all major decisions are
made together with equal um are both opinions are equally
valued and as important. And that's that's really unusual and
as such a blessing to have. That's that's good relationship advice.
I think if the relationship is hard, if it's creating
(14:36):
what do they call it souris um and a lot
of unhappiness, you're investing a lot too much time in
trying to figure out what's wrong. I think that's a
big flashing sign that it's not right. And I think
some women, especially try to fix things and they try
(14:58):
to make it better, and sometimes things just aren't fixable.
And having an ease that a wonderful partnership and friendship
can have is so important. And um, that's what I
have with my husband too, And it's just, um, I
(15:19):
don't know, it just it just lifts. It's something lifts
from you when you're not in n And I've been
in relationships that weren't good, that didn't make me feel
happy or fulfilled or cared about. And people out there
listening to this should if they feel like they're in
(15:41):
a relationship like that that doesn't make them feel good
or you know, knowing that every relationship takes a modicum
of work and it's not going to be you know,
rainbows and unicorns and sunshine all the time. But if
there's some thing that is just nagging at you and
(16:02):
if it just doesn't feel right, chances are it's not.
So I'm really happy that you're happy, you know. Tell
me why you decided to write this book now, because
I know in the early pages you say some might
say this is about a midlife crisis. I call it
a midlife reassessment of priorities and my realization the real
(16:24):
satisfaction and meaning for me at fifty six years old
came from canny tomatoes and cleaning the chicken coop rather
than implants and hair color and other efforts to stop
time from marching across my face. UM, tell me about
that realization, Melissa, And when you decided that that wasn't
(16:47):
filling your soul and this constant kind of hamster wheel
of trying to stop the aging process or trying to um,
you know, fight other time was just not for you.
I don't think I consciously realized that it wasn't for
(17:09):
a long time, but it felt wrong. I remember being
in my forties, and it's sort of being a given
that now is when we start, you know, nipping and tucking,
and now is and now in my when I was
in my forties, we didn't have to do that, um
because we have fillers and we have botox, and and
I was living in Los Angeles and it was just
(17:29):
sort of do regor. It's what we do where in
this profession, we stay as young as we can for
as long as we can. Some people take it too
far and they look different from what they ever looked like.
But they're the really smart ones go to a doctor
who keeps them looking exactly the same. All well and good,
and if that's your choice, that's fine, but there was
(17:50):
something in me that felt that that was wrong. I
did it, I followed it. I went through surgeries, I had,
you know, as I talked about implants, I had you know,
I did botox, I did fillers, and it started to
get to the point where I was starting to not
look like myself. And the penultimate for me was when
I did Dancing with the Stars. I was at my
(18:13):
most sort of all about what I look like on
the outside because that show will also it sort of
feeds that the spray tan and the glitter and the
thin and the dancing, and you do have to be
in shape, and you do get in shape the longer
you're on the show, because you're dancing. I was dancing
eight hours a day. It's forty eight years old, which
(18:34):
is I would not normally to know otherwise, and it just,
you know, when it, when it was all over, I
was left thinking, who am This is not me? I
don't care about this stuff. I don't. And also it's exhausting.
It is so exhausting fighting something that's inevitable and natural
(18:55):
and organic. To be someone else's idea of who you
need to be. It just it rankled me, and I
remember getting mad at myself and thinking, what are you doing?
Stop this? Stop this, And I made a decision at
that point that that's it. I'm not doing this anymore.
It's too much work. I just want to be me.
(19:17):
I want to be comfortable in my own skin. I
want to be happy with who I am. I don't
want to keep chasing this ideal that other people have
placed on me that I believed. I don't really believe
that this, any of this is true. I think that
there is value in all of us at whatever age
we're at, and so, you know, gradually, step by step
(19:39):
it all started to change. The biggest step was permanently
removing the breast implants, which just had to happen. I
honestly gay at one point. You know, they don't tell
you when you get them in that they they have
a shelf life. You have to get them replaced at
(19:59):
least everything in years, which makes me to it. Well,
and then I'm looking at this and I'm thinking down
the road, I'm eighty five years old. Am I really
going to go under anesthesia to get new breast implants
because these have expired. Who does that? So I just thought, no,
this is no no no, no, no, no no no.
(20:19):
It seems it seems so counterintuitive to be forcing yourself
to have more surgeries later in life. So out they came.
And as soon as that happened, my whole body went, oh,
thank you. I just I felt better, I felt more
like myself. I I just it sort of gave me
that extra push to go, Okay, that's it. Now, I'm
(20:41):
not going to do anything else in my face. Now
I'm going to And then I stopped coloring my hair,
and it just sort of was like a gradual thing.
And I'm so glad it all happened that way because
I was, you know, a knitting kind of gray haired ish,
all most grant or granny when COVID hit and I
(21:04):
went into lockdown in the cat skills, and if I
had had to keep maintaining all that stuff, it never
would have never would have happened. So it was like
it was almost like I set myself up to be
ready to have this ultimately simpler, easier life, and and
it is. I mean, I it's so much easier. Um,
(21:26):
I don't think about what I look like really that much.
How can we change the conversation though? You know, I
think about this and I'm, you know, nine years old
at your fifty eight, and I'm so I am seven
years older than you are. And you know, I think
for people who are in the public eye, it's particularly
(21:49):
difficult to get older, um, in front of other people.
And you know, I think about this, and we used
to cover this when I was at the Today Show
and I was in my thirties and forties, and it
just seems like the conversation around aging really never changes
until people are experiencing getting older. And I just wonder,
(22:14):
is it possible to change the conversation because you think
of the word old and it has such a negative
connotation or older. And I write about this in my book,
where I might be on an Instagram live or doing
something and someone will comment, among many other things, wow,
(22:35):
she looks old, or you know this kind of thing
where it is it is meant to be insulting, and
yet it is inevitable, as you said, And I just
wonder how we can flip a switch somehow or even
have a gradual, gradually different perception of of what it
(22:59):
means to get older and to age, and that it's
not something that we should be full of shame or
embarrassment or humiliation. But I think that is how the
culture treats people who have are are over a certain age,
whether it's forty, fifty, sixty, seventy, whatever it is. And
(23:24):
I also one of my pet peeves is how people
infantilize older people Like I used to really hate when
people would say about my mom or dad when they
got older, or your parents are so cute, and I
would be like, honestly, my parents are amazing people. They're
(23:44):
incredibly smart, They've led these fascinating, interesting lives. They have
a lot to say. Please don't diminish them. I never
said this, really, but I thought it. Please don't because
I don't think people mean it as an insult, but
please don't diminish them by calling them cute. There's so
much to unpack in in just what all of what
(24:06):
you said. Um, it makes me crazy because it's the
reverse of who we should be. We should be honoring, respecting,
and going to our elders for advice for leadership. For
I mean, these are the people who've lived through all
of this stuff. They know, they know so much more
(24:28):
than we do at this point. So and and and
there are so many other cultures that revere people for
their age, that you gain status by aging, and it's
so frustrating. And then the other side of this what
popped up for me when you were talking about this
is the physical part of it. And the pressure to
(24:50):
look externally a certain way is something that is It's
so huge. Tim and I do a lot of road trips.
We have a tendency if one of us goes on location,
um to just drive. So we have a car, and
we rent a house and instead of staying in hotels
and so we drive cross country a lot. And I'll
tell you that you see a lot of billboards along
(25:13):
those drives. And the billboards generally are McDonald's, Taco Bell,
Mico suction, Um, do you want a facelift? Breast implants
in and out burger just and I look at the stuff,
and I think, what are we saying to people? Eat this?
Do all of this and then fix it at the
(25:33):
surgeon's office, because you don't want to look like you
eat that stuff. But please do I and and I
you know I have four sons, and so I never
really worried about a lot of that the impact of
that on the boys as much, because it is more
impactful for for girls and women. But now I have
daughters in law, and I have granddaughters, and the idea
(25:58):
that these in readibly perfect human beings, at some point,
because of societal pressure, will think that they are not
perfect makes me crazy. And if if if there were
a solution, I would get behind that in a second.
But I think it's so endemic and it's so pervasive
that it's going to require a huge cultural shift for
(26:22):
people to allow people to be who they are and
look the way they look and respect them regardless. So
I don't know how we get there, but I'm I'm
on board to make it happen if there's anything I
can do. I do feel like there have been some
positive changes in that we look at I think, I
mean there. It needs to change much more, but there
(26:45):
are some signs that beauty, the definition of beauty is
becoming more inclusive. That um, you know, more diverse, more
diversity in terms of race and ethnicity, more diversity in
terms of bodies, um a little, write a little, But
(27:06):
I think the overwhelming messaging that young women still receive
is this is this is your goal, and your external
packaging is more important than your internal um, your internal character.
But I do think there's some steps in that direction. Well,
(27:29):
other let's let's talk about some of the other things
that what what were you trying to to convey in
this book, because there are so many facets of you
as a person. You're politically active, you ran for office
when you temporary lived in Michigan. You've got to know
Governor Whitmer. How big a role does activism continue to
(27:53):
play in your life, Melissa, I can't imagine my life
without being an active at all. I mean, I I've
my mother UM raised us with a real sense of
civic responsibility, and my father too, but my mother really
(28:13):
was the primary because my father died when I was
so young. My mother was sort of my mother was
the center of all of our universes. But she raised
certainly my sister and I to be very socially conscious
and aware of injustice. And you know, I remember I
remember being a teeny, tiny, tiny, maybe five six year
old girl and having parties every year for UM, the
(28:37):
local head Start program at our house, and being around
those kids, and I didn't know what it meant. I
don't know what head start was four. I just knew
that all these families and kids would come over at
Christmas time in Santa Claus would come and I'd get
to play with everybody. But that's the kind of stuff
that I learned by us. Most is that this is
what we do. We give back, we support, we speak out,
(28:57):
we um We try to become passionate and loving and understanding,
and when someone is being hurt, we speak out on
their behalf. And so I've always been that way, and
I cannot imagine a time when I won't be that way.
I have reached a point, though, at this age, where
I feel that my my activism and advocacy is much
(29:18):
better boots on the ground than in office or setting
and creating policy. UM. I don't really feel like the
government works in its current form. I have some real problems.
My biggest problem is the money in politics. I think
it is the great corruptor of the political process. It
takes it out of the hands of of being for
(29:40):
the people by the people and turns it into being
for the few by a very few. UM. So that
will I will always rail against that. But for me,
in a smaller sense, the little things I can do
to help people to make sure that they have healthcare
or access to education, or the freedoms that they deserve,
(30:01):
or even something as small but as large as making
sure that there's a pediatric hospice center in every city
is a big deal to me. And that's something I
can actually affect. Um, So that's the kind of stuff
that I will continue to get involved in. Your mom
kept it from you that your dad uh that a
(30:23):
stroke and and poor quality care at at a v
A hospital ultimately drove him to take his own life.
And yet you didn't discover that until you were forty
five years old. Um, how did that impact your views
towards the system in general and how it can be changed?
(30:48):
Because I know that's an issue that helped you connect
with Michigan voters when you ran for office. How how
has that changed your thinking about healthcare and about mental
health care? Yeah? It really it was. It was incredibly
impactful for me because, Um, when I found out about
(31:11):
my father's suicide, I still couldn't get the answers I needed.
So I went and hired someone to pull records for
me from from the corner and the l A p D.
But no photographs, obviously, because I wanted to know the circumstances.
And as he said, I found out that he had
been in uncontrolled chronic pain and had been threatening suicide
(31:33):
and begging for help, and was under the care of
the VIA in Los Angeles, and nobody did anything. And
I know that when he died that he only had
tile and all in his system and a little bit
of dai Lantin for seizures, but nothing for pain, nothing
for muscle spasms, nothing, I mean nothing. And this is
a man who served in World War Two, who was
(31:54):
with the USO and Vietnam, went every right to the
best possible care as a veteran who defended the United States,
and wasn't getting it. And I realized, you know, for many, many,
many years, especially since Vietnam, we hear about the veterans
who came home who didn't get the right kind of care,
and and to hear about the tragedies at VA hospitals,
(32:14):
and certainly what happened during COVID in the in the
world of the v a UM and how horrible it is.
But it did not really have a lot of wait
for me until I realized my father is that statistic,
and it made me want to fix it. And that's
(32:37):
part of that's part of the reason why I ran
for office too, was the opportunity to do something on
that large scale, and it enabled me to UM also
to gain something really valuable in in knowing, not only
am I not alone in being the survivor of a
parent who has died by suicide, so I can talk
(32:59):
to other people, but I'm also not alone in being
the daughter of a veteran who died by suicide UM.
And I think it's it's really important for people like
me and everyone around us UM to continue to talk
about these things because the more we bring them out
in the open, the more they can be dealt with,
(33:21):
and the less stigma there is, the less fear there is.
And you know, there's nothing I've noticed UM over the
course of my life. There's there's nothing more powerful than
finding a community and knowing you're not alone in any experience,
and we never are the only ones to suffer anything
or walk through anything. There's always someone who's been there,
(33:42):
and if we can connect on that level, it makes
it so much easier to deal with and maybe enables
us to prevent it from happening to the next person.
We'll be right back, you know. I think that right
(34:07):
now people are in sort of I think there's a
lot of despair in the country right now. I think
people see things like global warming, and they see things
like the war in Ukraine and the senseless brutal murders
(34:28):
that are going on there on a daily basis, to
the point where I think sometimes people can't watch it
anymore and don't have the bandwidth to even kind of
absorb it. Now, reproductive rights are being threatened in this country,
and I think that that people are feeling lost. And
(34:50):
while you say a community is really important, it's something
that we try to foster at the company that my
husband and I have created, trying to have a community
of people who care about issues and want to be
informed and better understand them. I think there are a
lot of people who are just feeling this sense of hopelessness.
(35:11):
And I just wonder, from your life experiences and as
you've kind of are embarking on continue to embark on
a new chapter almost constantly, what do you think people
can do to feel more connected and more hopeful and
(35:34):
more engaged and have a voice in the world we're
living in. That's that's that's very um, that's very difficult. UM,
it's a very difficult question to answer because we're coming
out of this very unprecedented time. Um where Initially, and
(35:57):
this is my opinion, but initially, you know, had the
politics of of two thousand sixteen and before that and
that election that sort of pushed people into their political
silos a bit and enabled also a lot of people
to say things they normally wouldn't have. And then we
have social media and the Internet, which is a fantastic
(36:17):
tool to have, but it also has enabled us to
say terrible things too, and about one another without repercussions.
It's much easier to say a horrible thing about someone
from your living room on the computer than it is
when you're standing right next to them. So we really
started to silo then, and then we had to lock down,
(36:39):
and we siloed even more. And I know everybody talked
about how lonely they were and how upset they were,
and I and I understand, I understand that. But now
is the lockdowns have lifted and we're starting to integrate more.
I think it would be great if opinion leaders and
the leadership of the country and the world. UM. And
(37:02):
if people with degrees that make them much better at
this than me would tell us and remind us how
to be human again towards one another and how to
to approach each other in a loving, compassionate way. UM.
I actually said to someone recently, you know, when they
started lifting mask mandates. UM, I will stop squinting and
(37:26):
making faces at people who don't wear masks if people
will not squint and make faces at me if I
choose to wear a mask, So that's a truce. I mean,
I'm looking for a truth. And I think that's just
like a tiny little example of the things we need
to stop doing, all of us, full stop. UM. And
(37:48):
I would love to see greater access to UM mental
mental health care and mental health professionals. I think we
could all do with someone to talk to it this
and about how to get back into being a loving, compassionate, kind,
generous human being again, because you know, it was all
(38:11):
about survival for a long time, and now it's about
coming back together. And I think we need we need
leadership to find our way to do that, and we're
definitely not getting it from our leaders at all. Really,
it's still so siloed and and so bitter and and
and um loud, it's just loud. I can't even watch
(38:33):
the news anymore. I have to read it. I think,
for whatever reason, it's almost Pavlovian to be angry and
to channel that anger into a lack of respect for
someone with whom we disagree, and um, it is sort
of our default setting now. And you're right, somehow we
(38:55):
have to get back into and I think it's I
think that is um nurtured and encouraged by both political
leaders in some cases the media, and I just hope
there is a way we can. You know, we're compromised,
or appreciation for a different point of view or coming
(39:18):
up with some kind of common goals isn't seen as
capitulation or isn't seen as a concept that is just
anathema two our current culture. If that makes sense, Yeah,
it does make sense, and it will be the undoing
(39:38):
of our species if we don't find a way. Well,
let's let's leave things on a bright note. Shall we
all learn no money? Something happy? Please? Katie? Well, I
do have a lot of faith in young people. And
now you're a grandmother and you're seeing you know, this
new generation of young people who I think here matt
(40:01):
as hell a little little disappointed to say the least,
and what their quote unquote elders have done to address
some of these burning issues. But they are really um
trying to change change the country, in the world for
the better. So I do find that to be uh
(40:25):
inspiring and comforting, I guess in a way. Have you
seen that in your own experience? Yes, yes, And that
is absolutely a source of hope. I see it with
my kids, and I especially I see it with potentially
with my grandchildren. We are Our oldest grandchild is seven
(40:46):
now and she um participated in a climate change march
not too long ago and made her own sign that
said I stand with Greta, and she knows who she is,
and she knows who at A is and what she
stands for, and she has so much UM respect for
her and this is who she looks up to at
(41:08):
the age of seven. So I can't help but be
hopeful when I see that, UM, and I I am.
I am completely and hopeful that she's not the only one,
and that these next generations are going to do what's
right and and try and fix what we unfortunately are
(41:32):
are leaving them, which is better than what we were given.
I think in a lot of ways, um, and in
a lot of ways not so much so. UM. I
am hopeful and I'm just, you know, trying to live
my peaceful little existence up in the Catskills more than
anywhere else, with my chickens and my garden and my
husband and my dog and my knitting. And I come
(41:55):
down and speak my piece when I asked you, and
then I go back home and sit in my recliner
and knit. That's that's my life right now. But it
sounds like it's working for you. It's heaven. It's absolutely heavenly.
I I I, I don't know that I've ever know
I've I've never been happier or more content in my life,
(42:17):
which is interesting with all the things going on in
the world, and it's sad and heartbroken as I can be.
When I when I watched the footage coming in from
Ukraine and I read the stories of people who are
suffering all over the world, and people who don't have
access to healthcare and don't have access to uh, the
right kind of education, and it does those are the
(42:41):
things that break my heart. But the balance for me
is that I can go back to my retreat up
in the mountains and I can gather eggs for my
chickens and donate them to the local food bank and
at least do something in a small way to help
my community. I think that's really the key is trying
(43:02):
to make if you feel frustrated, try to make your
world better. And that means your community. And I think
if people focus on doing more at us at a
at a more local level. Um, that's that's if if
everyone did that, then it would have that that would
(43:24):
echo across the land and and maybe and keep people
from getting too overwhelmed. Right, Yes, it all you know
they say charity starts at home. It all starts at home.
So you start in the smallest circle possible. You don't
We don't all have to run for Congress or the Senate. Um,
(43:45):
we don't even have to run for office. Just do
something for someone on your block, by their groceries, bake
him up high, sit and listen, take them to a
doctor's appointment, run their errands. It's so bowl, it really is,
and it means the world, and we'll change your life. Well,
(44:06):
that's a good note to end on. Melissa, it's so
good to see you and your new book is called
Back to the Prairie. Thank you for spending some time
talking with us about that. There's so much more in
the book obviously than the things we touched upon, but
it's just nice to have a conversation with you. Um,
(44:27):
you know, someone that we've known for so long and
we've watched grow and change and uh, you know, ultimately
become the person you were destined to be. So thank you, Melissa.
Thanks Katie, that's very very sweet and it's always a
joy to talk to you. A big thank you to
(44:48):
my guest Melissa Gilbert. Her book was Katie with you
and Courtney as long as you supervising so is Lauren Hansen.
Associate producers Derek Clements and Adriana Fasio. The show is
edited and mixed by Derrick Clements. For more information about
(45:09):
today's episode, or to sign up for my morning newsletter,
wake Up Call, go to Katie correct dot com. You
can also find me at Katie Currect on Instagram and
all my social media channels. For more podcasts from I
Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
Hey all, you cool cats and kittens. It's Katie Curic
and this is a bonus episode of Next Question. You
probably know Melissa Gilbert best from her time playing Laura
Ingalls for nine seasons on the classic NBC show Little
House on the Prairie. What are you doing up there?
What does it look like I'm doing? Uh huh. You'll
(00:27):
come down here this minute and get yourself off your school.
You can, Laura, I'm coming, I'm coming. Well. Melissa has
done a lot since then. She's continued to act, tried
her hand at directing, served as the president of the
Screen Actors Guilled, and even briefly ran for Congress. But
in recent years she made a decision to start a
(00:49):
new phase of her life far away from Hollywood. She
left her native l A to live with her husband,
the actor and director Timothy Busfield, in rural Michigan, and
eventually ended up settling in a rustic fix her upper
cottage in the Catskill Mountains. It was a pretty radical
lifestyle change for Melissa, and it sparked a number of
(01:10):
realizations about her old life and the way she wants
to live now. She writes all about it in her
new book Back to the prairie. We had a really
fun conversation about everything from her decision to lose the
botox to how she found love later in life. I
hope you'll enjoy our chat as much as I did.
(01:33):
So you are keeping busy, you are still writing, You're
still doing a ton of things. But we're here to
talk about your book, and I know this one, this
is not your first, but it concentrates on the last
dozen years of your life. But first I just want
to catch people up on some of the things that
(01:53):
happened earlier in your life, Melissa. Because you were adopted,
you have such a fascinating life. You've lived such an
interesting life. You were adopted the day after you're born.
Your dad was an actor and comedian. Your mom was
a dancer and actress, was becoming a performer, getting into
(02:16):
show biz. As they say, kind of a foregone conclusion
given your background. I think so. I think that my
family was probably really lucky to have adopted someone with
the blood line of a Carney. Also, I mean I
was sort of born I was born with jazz hands,
(02:37):
so it was in me, and then it was nurse
purtured even more by this family of incredible entertainers. I
mean going back to my father in his youth started
out as an acrobat in the circus as a child
with Ringling brothers. So that's really how the evolution started.
So I like to think I landed in exactly the
(02:58):
right place. I only think that there's something to be
said for show business being in your blood. I just
interviewed Jennifer Gray about her book and her grandfather, Joel
Gray's father was also an entertainer. He was like a
borsch belt comedian, and um, you know, there is something
about growing up in that environment, isn't there that just
(03:21):
infuses you with this god a dance feeling. Right. Yes,
And in my family, it's also multi generational too. It's
not just my father and my mother and me my
father's parents. My father's father was an Irish vaudevillian and
his mother was a French aerialist, and my mother's mother
(03:43):
was a beauty queen, and my mother's father was a
comedy writer, started out as a stand up comic and
created The Honeymooners. So it's definitely something that was just
a given. I mean, when I as a teenager announced
to the family that I wanted to go to medical school,
everybody went, what a doctor? Can't you just play one
on television? It's kind of the opposite what a normal
(04:08):
family would say. Sometimes so a showbiz household. Not always,
but sometimes it comes with a bit of chaos. You
write about your mom being married several times, your dad
was married a believe it or not thirteen times, and
you have to wonder how that UH informed your view
(04:31):
of marriage, relationships, et cetera. How did it. I don't
know that I was very good at relationships for a
really long time. I think, um, I think that well clearly,
having been married and divorced, or being divorced twice and
now married for a third time, same goodness, I'm in
(04:51):
a much better place now after you know, years of growth,
years of walking through these horrible things, decades of therapy
of five ending a way to live a really comfortable
and peaceful life. But it wasn't always that way. And
I don't necessarily know that I chose. I know that
I didn't choose easy relationships or people that I knew
(05:14):
I would have easy relationships. I definitely chose the more
challenging uh fellas, and it ended up being a lot
to deal with and I finally reached a point, you know,
in my my later years in my late forties, where
I went, what am I doing? I'm I'm sort of
bending myself into being someone I'm not for, someone who
(05:36):
I don't necessarily know that I really should be with.
And it was It's a hard it's a hard realization,
but it's a really important one because going into my
marriage with Tim, more than knowing what I do want,
I know what I don't want, and that's a really
big deal. More with Melissa Gilbert right after this, in
(06:07):
your book, you talk very honestly about the mistakes you've
made or the marriages that didn't work, and you were
particularly candid about your second marriage to Bruce brockx Lightner,
who I remember when Uh he was television star. He
hasn't done that much lately as far as I know,
(06:28):
but I could be wrong about that. Is that, Um,
I think he's he has a series on on on
I think it's on the Lifetime Palmar channel, one of
the two. But he's he's one of those constantly working actors,
which is great. Yeah, And but you you write about him,
and you go into great detail about sort of this
(06:49):
aha moment you had. I think many relationships have that
moment when something clicks or snaps, and it was when
you had surgery and and back surgery specifically, and he
suggested that you take a car home that he couldn't
pick you up from the hospital. And what what clicked
(07:13):
for you when that happened, You know it is I
was very accustomed through that entire relationship to taking care
of everyone, and and and and I've done this my
whole life before this, but it really it multiplied during
that marriage to taking care of everyone to the detriment
of myself. Like if everyone got sick and I got
sick and I climbed into bed, he gets sick, and
(07:35):
then I'd have to get out of bed to make
sure he was taken care of or whatever was going on.
It just I it was just an autopilot thing for me.
And it's something I also did, you know, being a
working child actor too. There's no time to be sick,
there's no time to have broken bones. I worked through
all that stuff as a kid, so I was very
good at the show must go on, therefore, life must
go on. And after I broke my back and had
(08:00):
urgery to repair it and was ready to go home,
was being released. I was being released from the hospital
and going home to home nurses with a walker and
all the stuff that I needed. And I called him
and he said he didn't want to drive all the
way to the hospital, that he just wanted me to
call a friend or take a car. I hung up
the phone and I went, I mean I literally was
(08:20):
like it was like a lightning bolt. I went that
that's that's actually wrong. It's not and why is it?
Why am I in this position right now? What is
it about me that allowed me to be in a
marriage where it's given that that I would just say, okay,
call I'll call a town car to drive me home
after having my broken back fixed. And I thought, this
(08:44):
is uh, this is this is this is not what
marriage is supposed to be. Like I could do this
on my own. If I didn't have a partner. I
we would be a given that I would have arranged
for someone to pick me up. It would be a
given that I would arrange to have all these people
take care of me. It would be a given that
I would have arranged to have food dropped off for
the family and for me um And the fact that
(09:05):
I had to do that while having a partner led
me to pause and go, this is this is not
the partnership I need at this point in my life.
I can do this on my own, and I'd rather
just do it on my own and know that I'm
relying on myself entirely. And that was sort of the
beginning of of the end. And the more time went on,
(09:26):
the more I realized how far apart we really were
and what we either of us wanted in a marriage
and in life. And that was sort of the real
If you'll forgive the pun straw that broke the camel's back,
you have a great, meat cute story about Tim in
the book, and how that happened. Tell us that story. Um,
(09:50):
I was. I was going out with my gay best
friend and a bunch of his friends. We were going
uh disco dancing in Los Angeles at the time, I
was living in Los Angeles. Still. We were going out
to disco night at a club called oil Can Harry's
in the San Fernando Valley and the goal was to
meet up at this one restaurant that had board games.
(10:12):
We're going to have dinner and play board games and
then go and the restaurant had closed permanently. So my
friend Daniel and I were driving around and there was
this little sort of strip mall that had a bar
in it that I knew about, and I said, well,
why don't we go there and just kill some time.
It's right across the street. Everyone can come there. We
walked in the place that just opened. There was no
one there, and as soon as we walked in, my
(10:35):
friend Danny said, I left my phone at your house,
which was ten minutes away, and I said, we'll go.
So now I'm alone in a bar, which never ever
in in a strip mall, in a strip mall, in
l a off of bar room, no, sitting there with
my Cranberry Club soda by myself and I the there's
(10:57):
a velvet curtain at the door, and the and opens,
and this guy walks past me in his big sort
of coat with a baseball cap on, and he has
a slice of pizza on a paper plate in one
hand and a backpack and he puts it all down
and he sits down and he orders a mescal, which
makes me laugh, and I just mess gal is just
such a specific thing for someone to drink. And I
(11:20):
looked and I saw his profile and I thought, oh
my gosh, that's Tim Busfield. And we had just become
friends on Facebook, um, which is sort of random. And
I've met him a couple of times before, but I
never really had any long conversations. And you have to know,
I'm really shy. I don't tend to go up to people,
even if I've known them for years or worked with
(11:43):
them years and years ago. I'm always afraid someone's going
to not know who I am, and just kind of,
you know, I just don't want to do it. And
I somehow screwed up the courage to say, hey, Tim,
and he turned and he looked at me, and I said,
Melissa Gilbert and he went, oh, and I said, we
just became friends on Facebook. So we stayed way apart
(12:03):
from each other in this bar, like five stools apart,
talking and then he moved one closer, and then I
moved one closer than that continued till we were side
by side, and I think, I don't know, we must
have been talking for hours, because they turned around and
my friend Danny was there and all of his friends
had been standing there for at least two hours watching
(12:24):
this whole thing. And I didn't even know that they
were there, and it was time to go, and UM,
and I kept looking at them, going what am I doing?
I've lost my mind? And they're you know, begging me
on and Tim decided to leave, and he got up
to go and had his way out. He grabbed my
ear lobe and we had exchanged phone numbers. He said,
(12:46):
I'm going to go, and I looked and I said, yes,
good idea, quit while you're ahead. And he left. He
grabbed your earlobe. We're not grabbed, I mean like gently
grabbed your earlobe. He fondled my earlobe. Sounds so gross.
He tugged my earlobe. There you go, gently tug Yeah,
(13:06):
kind of like Carol Burnett, Yes, exactly. It was kind
of just a little like tickle and UM. The next
morning or late morning, because I went out late dancing
with my friends. Um, the next morning, I texted him
do you want to meet for brunch? Right as he
was texting me saying do you want to meet for brunch?
So we met for brunch, and I don't think we've
(13:28):
been apart more than I think the longest we've been
a part of five days since then, in ten years
and it sounds like you're really happy. I am. I am.
It's I had a friend many many years ago, when
I was going through relationship agony in my twenties, who said,
you know, there's there's easier relationships out there. And I
(13:52):
never thought i'd be a person that had an easier relationship.
And I do. And there's not a day that goes
by that I'm not grateful that. Um. It's that really
virtually nothing in my life is a struggle anymore. It's
very peaceful, it's very calm, it's very soothing, um And
and most importantly, it's a partnership. We consult each other
(14:14):
about everything, We share everything, and all major decisions are
made together with equal um are both opinions are equally
valued and as important. And that's that's really unusual and
as such a blessing to have. That's that's good relationship advice.
I think if the relationship is hard, if it's creating
(14:36):
what do they call it souris um and a lot
of unhappiness, you're investing a lot too much time in
trying to figure out what's wrong. I think that's a
big flashing sign that it's not right. And I think
some women, especially try to fix things and they try
(14:58):
to make it better, and sometimes things just aren't fixable.
And having an ease that a wonderful partnership and friendship
can have is so important. And um, that's what I
have with my husband too, And it's just, um, I
(15:19):
don't know, it just it just lifts. It's something lifts
from you when you're not in n And I've been
in relationships that weren't good, that didn't make me feel
happy or fulfilled or cared about. And people out there
listening to this should if they feel like they're in
(15:41):
a relationship like that that doesn't make them feel good
or you know, knowing that every relationship takes a modicum
of work and it's not going to be you know,
rainbows and unicorns and sunshine all the time. But if
there's some thing that is just nagging at you and
(16:02):
if it just doesn't feel right, chances are it's not.
So I'm really happy that you're happy, you know. Tell
me why you decided to write this book now, because
I know in the early pages you say some might
say this is about a midlife crisis. I call it
a midlife reassessment of priorities and my realization the real
(16:24):
satisfaction and meaning for me at fifty six years old
came from canny tomatoes and cleaning the chicken coop rather
than implants and hair color and other efforts to stop
time from marching across my face. UM, tell me about
that realization, Melissa, And when you decided that that wasn't
(16:47):
filling your soul and this constant kind of hamster wheel
of trying to stop the aging process or trying to um,
you know, fight other time was just not for you.
I don't think I consciously realized that it wasn't for
(17:09):
a long time, but it felt wrong. I remember being
in my forties, and it's sort of being a given
that now is when we start, you know, nipping and tucking,
and now is and now in my when I was
in my forties, we didn't have to do that, um
because we have fillers and we have botox, and and
I was living in Los Angeles and it was just
(17:29):
sort of do regor. It's what we do where in
this profession, we stay as young as we can for
as long as we can. Some people take it too
far and they look different from what they ever looked like.
But they're the really smart ones go to a doctor
who keeps them looking exactly the same. All well and good,
and if that's your choice, that's fine, but there was
(17:50):
something in me that felt that that was wrong. I
did it, I followed it. I went through surgeries, I had,
you know, as I talked about implants, I had you know,
I did botox, I did fillers, and it started to
get to the point where I was starting to not
look like myself. And the penultimate for me was when
I did Dancing with the Stars. I was at my
(18:13):
most sort of all about what I look like on
the outside because that show will also it sort of
feeds that the spray tan and the glitter and the
thin and the dancing, and you do have to be
in shape, and you do get in shape the longer
you're on the show, because you're dancing. I was dancing
eight hours a day. It's forty eight years old, which
(18:34):
is I would not normally to know otherwise, and it just,
you know, when it, when it was all over, I
was left thinking, who am This is not me? I
don't care about this stuff. I don't. And also it's exhausting.
It is so exhausting fighting something that's inevitable and natural
(18:55):
and organic. To be someone else's idea of who you
need to be. It just it rankled me, and I
remember getting mad at myself and thinking, what are you doing?
Stop this? Stop this, And I made a decision at
that point that that's it. I'm not doing this anymore.
It's too much work. I just want to be me.
(19:17):
I want to be comfortable in my own skin. I
want to be happy with who I am. I don't
want to keep chasing this ideal that other people have
placed on me that I believed. I don't really believe
that this, any of this is true. I think that
there is value in all of us at whatever age
we're at, and so, you know, gradually, step by step
(19:39):
it all started to change. The biggest step was permanently
removing the breast implants, which just had to happen. I
honestly gay at one point. You know, they don't tell
you when you get them in that they they have
a shelf life. You have to get them replaced at
(19:59):
least everything in years, which makes me to it. Well,
and then I'm looking at this and I'm thinking down
the road, I'm eighty five years old. Am I really
going to go under anesthesia to get new breast implants
because these have expired. Who does that? So I just thought, no,
this is no no no, no, no, no no no.
(20:19):
It seems it seems so counterintuitive to be forcing yourself
to have more surgeries later in life. So out they came.
And as soon as that happened, my whole body went, oh,
thank you. I just I felt better, I felt more
like myself. I I just it sort of gave me
that extra push to go, Okay, that's it. Now, I'm
(20:41):
not going to do anything else in my face. Now
I'm going to And then I stopped coloring my hair,
and it just sort of was like a gradual thing.
And I'm so glad it all happened that way because
I was, you know, a knitting kind of gray haired ish,
all most grant or granny when COVID hit and I
(21:04):
went into lockdown in the cat skills, and if I
had had to keep maintaining all that stuff, it never
would have never would have happened. So it was like
it was almost like I set myself up to be
ready to have this ultimately simpler, easier life, and and
it is. I mean, I it's so much easier. Um,
(21:26):
I don't think about what I look like really that much.
How can we change the conversation though? You know, I
think about this and I'm, you know, nine years old
at your fifty eight, and I'm so I am seven
years older than you are. And you know, I think
for people who are in the public eye, it's particularly
(21:49):
difficult to get older, um, in front of other people.
And you know, I think about this, and we used
to cover this when I was at the Today Show
and I was in my thirties and forties, and it
just seems like the conversation around aging really never changes
until people are experiencing getting older. And I just wonder,
(22:14):
is it possible to change the conversation because you think
of the word old and it has such a negative
connotation or older. And I write about this in my book,
where I might be on an Instagram live or doing
something and someone will comment, among many other things, wow,
(22:35):
she looks old, or you know this kind of thing
where it is it is meant to be insulting, and
yet it is inevitable, as you said, And I just
wonder how we can flip a switch somehow or even
have a gradual, gradually different perception of of what it
(22:59):
means to get older and to age, and that it's
not something that we should be full of shame or
embarrassment or humiliation. But I think that is how the
culture treats people who have are are over a certain age,
whether it's forty, fifty, sixty, seventy, whatever it is. And
(23:24):
I also one of my pet peeves is how people
infantilize older people Like I used to really hate when
people would say about my mom or dad when they
got older, or your parents are so cute, and I
would be like, honestly, my parents are amazing people. They're
(23:44):
incredibly smart, They've led these fascinating, interesting lives. They have
a lot to say. Please don't diminish them. I never
said this, really, but I thought it. Please don't because
I don't think people mean it as an insult, but
please don't diminish them by calling them cute. There's so
much to unpack in in just what all of what
(24:06):
you said. Um, it makes me crazy because it's the
reverse of who we should be. We should be honoring, respecting,
and going to our elders for advice for leadership. For
I mean, these are the people who've lived through all
of this stuff. They know, they know so much more
(24:28):
than we do at this point. So and and and
there are so many other cultures that revere people for
their age, that you gain status by aging, and it's
so frustrating. And then the other side of this what
popped up for me when you were talking about this
is the physical part of it. And the pressure to
(24:50):
look externally a certain way is something that is It's
so huge. Tim and I do a lot of road trips.
We have a tendency if one of us goes on location,
um to just drive. So we have a car, and
we rent a house and instead of staying in hotels
and so we drive cross country a lot. And I'll
tell you that you see a lot of billboards along
(25:13):
those drives. And the billboards generally are McDonald's, Taco Bell,
Mico suction, Um, do you want a facelift? Breast implants
in and out burger just and I look at the stuff,
and I think, what are we saying to people? Eat this?
Do all of this and then fix it at the
(25:33):
surgeon's office, because you don't want to look like you
eat that stuff. But please do I and and I
you know I have four sons, and so I never
really worried about a lot of that the impact of
that on the boys as much, because it is more
impactful for for girls and women. But now I have
daughters in law, and I have granddaughters, and the idea
(25:58):
that these in readibly perfect human beings, at some point,
because of societal pressure, will think that they are not
perfect makes me crazy. And if if if there were
a solution, I would get behind that in a second.
But I think it's so endemic and it's so pervasive
that it's going to require a huge cultural shift for
(26:22):
people to allow people to be who they are and
look the way they look and respect them regardless. So
I don't know how we get there, but I'm I'm
on board to make it happen if there's anything I
can do. I do feel like there have been some
positive changes in that we look at I think, I
mean there. It needs to change much more, but there
(26:45):
are some signs that beauty, the definition of beauty is
becoming more inclusive. That um, you know, more diverse, more
diversity in terms of race and ethnicity, more diversity in
terms of bodies, um a little, write a little, But
(27:06):
I think the overwhelming messaging that young women still receive
is this is this is your goal, and your external
packaging is more important than your internal um, your internal character.
But I do think there's some steps in that direction. Well,
(27:29):
other let's let's talk about some of the other things
that what what were you trying to to convey in
this book, because there are so many facets of you
as a person. You're politically active, you ran for office
when you temporary lived in Michigan. You've got to know
Governor Whitmer. How big a role does activism continue to
(27:53):
play in your life, Melissa, I can't imagine my life
without being an active at all. I mean, I I've
my mother UM raised us with a real sense of
civic responsibility, and my father too, but my mother really
(28:13):
was the primary because my father died when I was
so young. My mother was sort of my mother was
the center of all of our universes. But she raised
certainly my sister and I to be very socially conscious
and aware of injustice. And you know, I remember I
remember being a teeny, tiny, tiny, maybe five six year
old girl and having parties every year for UM, the
(28:37):
local head Start program at our house, and being around
those kids, and I didn't know what it meant. I
don't know what head start was four. I just knew
that all these families and kids would come over at
Christmas time in Santa Claus would come and I'd get
to play with everybody. But that's the kind of stuff
that I learned by us. Most is that this is
what we do. We give back, we support, we speak out,
(28:57):
we um We try to become passionate and loving and understanding,
and when someone is being hurt, we speak out on
their behalf. And so I've always been that way, and
I cannot imagine a time when I won't be that way.
I have reached a point, though, at this age, where
I feel that my my activism and advocacy is much
(29:18):
better boots on the ground than in office or setting
and creating policy. UM. I don't really feel like the
government works in its current form. I have some real problems.
My biggest problem is the money in politics. I think
it is the great corruptor of the political process. It
takes it out of the hands of of being for
(29:40):
the people by the people and turns it into being
for the few by a very few. UM. So that
will I will always rail against that. But for me,
in a smaller sense, the little things I can do
to help people to make sure that they have healthcare
or access to education, or the freedoms that they deserve,
(30:01):
or even something as small but as large as making
sure that there's a pediatric hospice center in every city
is a big deal to me. And that's something I
can actually affect. Um, So that's the kind of stuff
that I will continue to get involved in. Your mom
kept it from you that your dad uh that a
(30:23):
stroke and and poor quality care at at a v
A hospital ultimately drove him to take his own life.
And yet you didn't discover that until you were forty
five years old. Um, how did that impact your views
towards the system in general and how it can be changed?
(30:48):
Because I know that's an issue that helped you connect
with Michigan voters when you ran for office. How how
has that changed your thinking about healthcare and about mental
health care? Yeah? It really it was. It was incredibly
impactful for me because, Um, when I found out about
(31:11):
my father's suicide, I still couldn't get the answers I needed.
So I went and hired someone to pull records for
me from from the corner and the l A p D.
But no photographs, obviously, because I wanted to know the circumstances.
And as he said, I found out that he had
been in uncontrolled chronic pain and had been threatening suicide
(31:33):
and begging for help, and was under the care of
the VIA in Los Angeles, and nobody did anything. And
I know that when he died that he only had
tile and all in his system and a little bit
of dai Lantin for seizures, but nothing for pain, nothing
for muscle spasms, nothing, I mean nothing. And this is
a man who served in World War Two, who was
(31:54):
with the USO and Vietnam, went every right to the
best possible care as a veteran who defended the United States,
and wasn't getting it. And I realized, you know, for many, many,
many years, especially since Vietnam, we hear about the veterans
who came home who didn't get the right kind of care,
and and to hear about the tragedies at VA hospitals,
(32:14):
and certainly what happened during COVID in the in the
world of the v a UM and how horrible it is.
But it did not really have a lot of wait
for me until I realized my father is that statistic,
and it made me want to fix it. And that's
(32:37):
part of that's part of the reason why I ran
for office too, was the opportunity to do something on
that large scale, and it enabled me to UM also
to gain something really valuable in in knowing, not only
am I not alone in being the survivor of a
parent who has died by suicide, so I can talk
(32:59):
to other people, but I'm also not alone in being
the daughter of a veteran who died by suicide UM.
And I think it's it's really important for people like
me and everyone around us UM to continue to talk
about these things because the more we bring them out
in the open, the more they can be dealt with,
(33:21):
and the less stigma there is, the less fear there is.
And you know, there's nothing I've noticed UM over the
course of my life. There's there's nothing more powerful than
finding a community and knowing you're not alone in any experience,
and we never are the only ones to suffer anything
or walk through anything. There's always someone who's been there,
(33:42):
and if we can connect on that level, it makes
it so much easier to deal with and maybe enables
us to prevent it from happening to the next person.
We'll be right back, you know. I think that right
(34:07):
now people are in sort of I think there's a
lot of despair in the country right now. I think
people see things like global warming, and they see things
like the war in Ukraine and the senseless brutal murders
(34:28):
that are going on there on a daily basis, to
the point where I think sometimes people can't watch it
anymore and don't have the bandwidth to even kind of
absorb it. Now, reproductive rights are being threatened in this country,
and I think that that people are feeling lost. And
(34:50):
while you say a community is really important, it's something
that we try to foster at the company that my
husband and I have created, trying to have a community
of people who care about issues and want to be
informed and better understand them. I think there are a
lot of people who are just feeling this sense of hopelessness.
(35:11):
And I just wonder, from your life experiences and as
you've kind of are embarking on continue to embark on
a new chapter almost constantly, what do you think people
can do to feel more connected and more hopeful and
(35:34):
more engaged and have a voice in the world we're
living in. That's that's that's very um, that's very difficult. UM,
it's a very difficult question to answer because we're coming
out of this very unprecedented time. Um where Initially, and
(35:57):
this is my opinion, but initially, you know, had the
politics of of two thousand sixteen and before that and
that election that sort of pushed people into their political
silos a bit and enabled also a lot of people
to say things they normally wouldn't have. And then we
have social media and the Internet, which is a fantastic
(36:17):
tool to have, but it also has enabled us to
say terrible things too, and about one another without repercussions.
It's much easier to say a horrible thing about someone
from your living room on the computer than it is
when you're standing right next to them. So we really
started to silo then, and then we had to lock down,
(36:39):
and we siloed even more. And I know everybody talked
about how lonely they were and how upset they were,
and I and I understand, I understand that. But now
is the lockdowns have lifted and we're starting to integrate more.
I think it would be great if opinion leaders and
the leadership of the country and the world. UM. And
(37:02):
if people with degrees that make them much better at
this than me would tell us and remind us how
to be human again towards one another and how to
to approach each other in a loving, compassionate way. UM.
I actually said to someone recently, you know, when they
started lifting mask mandates. UM, I will stop squinting and
(37:26):
making faces at people who don't wear masks if people
will not squint and make faces at me if I
choose to wear a mask, So that's a truce. I mean,
I'm looking for a truth. And I think that's just
like a tiny little example of the things we need
to stop doing, all of us, full stop. UM. And
(37:48):
I would love to see greater access to UM mental
mental health care and mental health professionals. I think we
could all do with someone to talk to it this
and about how to get back into being a loving, compassionate, kind,
generous human being again, because you know, it was all
(38:11):
about survival for a long time, and now it's about
coming back together. And I think we need we need
leadership to find our way to do that, and we're
definitely not getting it from our leaders at all. Really,
it's still so siloed and and so bitter and and
and um loud, it's just loud. I can't even watch
(38:33):
the news anymore. I have to read it. I think,
for whatever reason, it's almost Pavlovian to be angry and
to channel that anger into a lack of respect for
someone with whom we disagree, and um, it is sort
of our default setting now. And you're right, somehow we
(38:55):
have to get back into and I think it's I
think that is um nurtured and encouraged by both political
leaders in some cases the media, and I just hope
there is a way we can. You know, we're compromised,
or appreciation for a different point of view or coming
(39:18):
up with some kind of common goals isn't seen as
capitulation or isn't seen as a concept that is just
anathema two our current culture. If that makes sense, Yeah,
it does make sense, and it will be the undoing
(39:38):
of our species if we don't find a way. Well,
let's let's leave things on a bright note. Shall we
all learn no money? Something happy? Please? Katie? Well, I
do have a lot of faith in young people. And
now you're a grandmother and you're seeing you know, this
new generation of young people who I think here matt
(40:01):
as hell a little little disappointed to say the least,
and what their quote unquote elders have done to address
some of these burning issues. But they are really um
trying to change change the country, in the world for
the better. So I do find that to be uh
(40:25):
inspiring and comforting, I guess in a way. Have you
seen that in your own experience? Yes, yes, And that
is absolutely a source of hope. I see it with
my kids, and I especially I see it with potentially
with my grandchildren. We are Our oldest grandchild is seven
(40:46):
now and she um participated in a climate change march
not too long ago and made her own sign that
said I stand with Greta, and she knows who she is,
and she knows who at A is and what she
stands for, and she has so much UM respect for
her and this is who she looks up to at
(41:08):
the age of seven. So I can't help but be
hopeful when I see that, UM, and I I am.
I am completely and hopeful that she's not the only one,
and that these next generations are going to do what's
right and and try and fix what we unfortunately are
(41:32):
are leaving them, which is better than what we were given.
I think in a lot of ways, um, and in
a lot of ways not so much so. UM. I
am hopeful and I'm just, you know, trying to live
my peaceful little existence up in the Catskills more than
anywhere else, with my chickens and my garden and my
husband and my dog and my knitting. And I come
(41:55):
down and speak my piece when I asked you, and
then I go back home and sit in my recliner
and knit. That's that's my life right now. But it
sounds like it's working for you. It's heaven. It's absolutely heavenly.
I I I, I don't know that I've ever know
I've I've never been happier or more content in my life,
(42:17):
which is interesting with all the things going on in
the world, and it's sad and heartbroken as I can be.
When I when I watched the footage coming in from
Ukraine and I read the stories of people who are
suffering all over the world, and people who don't have
access to healthcare and don't have access to uh, the
right kind of education, and it does those are the
(42:41):
things that break my heart. But the balance for me
is that I can go back to my retreat up
in the mountains and I can gather eggs for my
chickens and donate them to the local food bank and
at least do something in a small way to help
my community. I think that's really the key is trying
(43:02):
to make if you feel frustrated, try to make your
world better. And that means your community. And I think
if people focus on doing more at us at a
at a more local level. Um, that's that's if if
everyone did that, then it would have that that would
(43:24):
echo across the land and and maybe and keep people
from getting too overwhelmed. Right, Yes, it all you know
they say charity starts at home. It all starts at home.
So you start in the smallest circle possible. You don't
We don't all have to run for Congress or the Senate. Um,
(43:45):
we don't even have to run for office. Just do
something for someone on your block, by their groceries, bake
him up high, sit and listen, take them to a
doctor's appointment, run their errands. It's so bowl, it really is,
and it means the world, and we'll change your life. Well,
(44:06):
that's a good note to end on. Melissa, it's so
good to see you and your new book is called
Back to the Prairie. Thank you for spending some time
talking with us about that. There's so much more in
the book obviously than the things we touched upon, but
it's just nice to have a conversation with you. Um,
(44:27):
you know, someone that we've known for so long and
we've watched grow and change and uh, you know, ultimately
become the person you were destined to be. So thank you, Melissa.
Thanks Katie, that's very very sweet and it's always a
joy to talk to you. A big thank you to
(44:48):
my guest Melissa Gilbert. Her book was Katie with you
and Courtney as long as you supervising so is Lauren Hansen.
Associate producers Derek Clements and Adriana Fasio. The show is
edited and mixed by Derrick Clements. For more information about
(45:09):
today's episode, or to sign up for my morning newsletter,
wake Up Call, go to Katie correct dot com. You
can also find me at Katie Currect on Instagram and
all my social media channels. For more podcasts from I
Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
Host
Katie Couric
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