You're listening to I Choose Me with Jenny Girl. Hi, everyone, welcome to I Choose Me. This podcast is all about the choices we make, and today I'm sitting down with someone who has made a lifetime of powerful choices, both in front of the camera and far beyond it. If you grew up watching Little House on the Prairie, like I did, you already know the impact Melissa Gilbert has
had on generations of women. But today I have the privilege to talk with the real woman behind Laura Ingalls, who was and is such a role model for me, both as a young actor and now as a businesswoman and industry leader. Trust me, she is a powerhouse. Melissa. I'm so excited that you are here. Why is Okay? First of all, I understand that you have or may have had a rooster named Fauci.
We did, We got we got our first batch of chickens and our rooster who we named Fauci in twenty twenty.
Okay, and yeah, that is so crazy. I have to show you a picture. I have a dog named Fauci. Here's to see how much he like doctor Fauci.
I do see that, Yes, I do see that.
Pandemic. Here's here's another angle. Oh my god.
Oh yeah, no, even more so.
That one's almost better.
So good.
I don't know if I named him because it was the pandemic and all I was hearing was doctor Fauji Faudi Fauchi Bauchi. But I really one day just looked into my dog's eyes and thought, oh my god, you look like Fauci and that's his name. Now do you think he ever expected to be having pets named after him?
I don't you know what I would imagine compared to the other things that have been after him.
That good point. Good point. Okay, So obviously, since you have chickens, you are out of LA. I'm so jealous. What was the decision for you to get the heck out of Dodge? How did you come to choose that big change in your life?
Yeah? I left LA quite a while ago when I married my husband, Tim Bussfield. When we met, he was he had moved back to his home state of Michigan, and so when we met, that's where he was living. And when he told me that, I said, that's great. Please get me out of LA.
Oh nice.
Yeah, I have to go somewhere I can age, and that.
So pathetic that we have to move from our homeland.
I know, to eight Justine. So we moved to Michigan. We were there for five years and it was amazing. It was so different and peaceful and grounding, and you know, the beginning of a marriage to have that time together. And our kids are grown, so we only had one at home still just for a little while. So it was a really great kind of honeymoon period. But it was also a really great time for me to really
kind of land into my own skin. We were there for those five years, and when those five years were up, you know, we started doing this thing where we would say, what do you want to do this weekend? Let's go to New York. Where do you want to where do you want to go have dinner? Somewhere in New York And so we started leaning towards New York again. And we went to New York City and had rented them like an Airbnb, a Verbo for a month or so just to kind of feel things out. And I got
a play oh yeah, which was really really fun. And so we made the decision to move to New York. So when we moved to the city, the first thing we said is we need air and space. We started looking for property in the Catskills and we found where I am now this what was a kind of beaten down old hunting cabin, seasonal, no heat. It was so bad that when we would leave the place, we would have to drain the water out so the pipes wouldn't explode.
And we renovated, as you could see. We put in heat, we insulated, we put in new plumbing, and it was ready for us to enjoy in December of twenty nineteen. So on March thirteenth, twenty twenty, when everyone locked down, we came up here and everything flipped and this became home nice and this scene is now the place we go for theater, doctors and sushi, basically perfect.
They have a lot of all of those.
Things, Yes they do. They have quite a few. And you know, since we've been up here, now we've now bought the land next door. So now we have forty acres.
Oh my god.
Yeah, we're starting to develop that. We have our second batch of chickens. We have a lot of wildlife up here. We lost we had a terrible incident with a raccoon a few weeks ago, so.
I think I heard about on your Instagram. I feel your pain. They just come in and kill things, rip them apart, and leave them.
Yeah. I actually had one do that in my house, my last house in La in Tarzana, in the flats at dusk while I was in the ark, jumped the fence, killed one of my dogs in front of me, and left. Oh it was horrible.
They're they're they're so cute, but they're so awful.
They're just jerk.
They're just little demons, they really are. We have we have bad experiences with raccoons people.
Sorry, Yeah, I know. Yeah, And I worked with one on little house when I was a kid, and I loved that one. But that was a trained hand fed oh baby raccoon.
Do you think that little, trained handfeld baby could ever turn on you and just like lash out?
Oh sure, I mean they're wild any wild animal, they're wild animals. I I just I can't imagine that, you know, they don't want to do that. So consequently, now I'm I have five chicks in the living room in a bruder that I'm andrewising. Now, So that's that's what.
You are living my dream life. I just want to say that you've gotten out of LA you're living with your third husband. High I'm my third husband, and it sounds like your life is amazing.
But it's great.
The animals and the nature. I'm really jealous, but I'm happy, but I'm jealous.
Thank you. It's really magical up here, and I have there. There are a couple of deer that come around every day that come for apples, and they've been visiting now for a year. And then I had one. I had a third one that had been visiting that just came back with a baby. And we've got gorgeous breath taking eagles up here and all kinds of fun things like.
Bigs, bears, Oh my, oh my, no, why in deepa I have? I have a question to ask you then, because you sound like mother nature herself what I have. Yesterday I was watering my roses and I saw a deer that had been there the day before, and she just stands there and like watches guard. So I thought, okay, that's a mommy and she's watching guard from the coyotes so if they don't get her baby. Then I saw her kind of go into this brushy area and then she came out with a baby, a tiny little fawn
with the dots on it. Still it was barely walking, and Melissa, I was so happy. But then my happiness crashed because I noticed that the baby had a broken leg. It has a broken leg. It couldn't it couldn't keep up with her, and she would go far ahead, and he would try and try, and finally he was like hobbling and he kept following her. But if I see them again, should I take that baby deer to the vet?
It's very very hard. I learned this because I've I actually picked a deer up off the road, a fawn off the road that had been hit by a car, and it didn't survive. But they they're very very delicate, and any kind of trauma they have, they have sort of an instinctive reaction where their bodies just start to shut down. So capturing the baby deer might even be more traumatic. I would what, I there are deer people all around, they're deer rescues. I'm there all over La too, and L like.
This is sounds like a better idea than me trying to scale the mountain to save the deep baby deer.
I would call a specifically a deer rescue and explain what's going on because that baby, the mom's probably going to reject it at some point and it's going to eat formula, milk care hydration. They're just they're really fragile.
Okay, I'm going to do that right after this podcast. Thank you for your advice. Well, let's talk about relationships for a second. Like you said, you're married to Timothy Busfield. He's your third husband. He was in obviously Everybody, he was in thirty something, West Wing just a name too. This guy has worked forever. What a great actor.
Yeah.
Really, and you've talked about marriage. I love when I have somebody on my podcast that, you know, I find these synchronicities with in our lives, even though we've never really hung out and we've never really known each other. I know. It's so cool because you said that he is your healing and stabilizing chapter.
Yeah, that's true. There's there's a groundedness to this marriage of ours and a comfort level. And I think it's part and parcel of the fact that it's a partnership that we do everything with the other one in mind, and we are very considerate of one another extreamly. We respect each other immensely, and so there are no decisions that are made singularly. Everything is discussed shared, and there's so much comfort in that, and it's so much gentler
and easier. And he is just a really spiritual, grounded, easygoing guy. I mean, you know, we all have our moments, but there's so few and far between with both of us. Even our arguments are constructive. Okay, good, Yeah, which is new for me. You know, arguing for me was for a long large part of my life something to be afraid of and then something that I did really badly. Once I found my voice, I picked too many fights
just to have them. And and now our arguments are are I mean, when we have them, they're you know, they can get they can get really heated, but we usually end up laugh and then sitting down and talking it through and it never lasts for more than a couple hours. Max.
What did you guys meet?
Well, we actually first met many many, many many years ago in the eighties, and then we re met in the nineties and then now we've been together for thirtyteen years.
Wow. Wow, Wow, that's incredible. Congrats, Wow.
Thanks.
Do you think that each of your marriages was made for the moment that you are that you were in.
No, yeah, absolutely, I think it fit with who I was at that time and with whatever was going on in my own Not to get too cycling, but healing journey from you know, the trauma of the family of origin stuff in childhood. And you know, as as time has gone by, I think I've I've become just more healed, which it's more grounded and a lot less dysfunctional. Maybe. I mean, you know, I'm always going to be a banana. I mean that's just there's no there's no why. I love you.
Yeah, I'm the best banana spirit ever.
I'm a carneie. You know, we we've grown up in this business. I've grown up in it, my multi generational family has, and so you know, I will jump to jazz hands given any opportunity. But I've learned how to set boundaries. I've learned how to hold those boundaries, and I've learned the most important thing, I think, and it's come later in life, is real patience.
It seems like we learned so much in after our fifties.
Well, yeah, I think that's that's valid, and I think that it's a really important time, especially for women. Because all of that other stuff is sort of out of the way. Our bodies are. Yeah, they're doing things, but they're not doing the same thing that drive to work or have kids and the hormones and that that sort of push is gone, at least for me. There's a there's a more of a relaxedness and more of an ease. And uh, it takes a lot to ruffle me these
days too. You know, I just don't. I don't. I don't give up. It's as I was gonna say, fuck, I fully.
Fully feel you you know what I mean, Like I I'm not interested in arguing. I'm not interested in wasting any of more of my precious time doing things that don't make me happy or make people around me happy exactly.
You know, there's some validity to the Marie condo and sparking joy. If it doesn't spark joy for anybody, then there's no point. There's no and tiny talk and going to things you don't want to go to if you don't have to, doing things you don't want to do if you don't have to. You know, this is the last third of our lives, and I think we have earned the right to live at the way we choose to. We've earned the right to our opinions and our ideas,
and that deserves some respect. Just the fact that we're here, productive, vital, vibrant women.
Yeah. I mean sometimes I'll look at myself and the maryor and I'll think, wow, you did it. You kept yourself alive, and you kept three little kids alive. You're doing all right.
Yeah, yeah, it's amazing. And then when the grandkids come.
Wait, that's how many grand kids you have?
We have nine?
Oh my god, that's a lot.
Well, we have a lot of kids all together. We have seven. I have four boys, and Tim has two boys and a girl whoa. And then one of our boys married a woman who already had three grown boys, so those became like big boys. And then there's all the littles. I mean, the littlest one is just over a year, probably closer to exteen months of yea, yeah, me, oh, they are they are. I I can't wait. It's so
great to have little people like that around. And I've made it very clear to all of the kids that my job is to say yes, so don't expect me to ever say no. Nana does not say no. I say to everything Nanna. That's Nana.
That's so cute. I can't wait to be a nana.
It's really good. It's really good. Actually, they've all the kids kind of call me different things. Nana is one chunk of the kids, and then the other there's another whole section of them that call me Granny Mel.
Granny Mel, Nana and Granny. Those are winners.
It's so good, so good.
You and I both had our earliest relationships in the spotlight. It's, oh yeah, hard enough to navigate a relationship when you're young like that without Hollywood, but you were with Robblo, who they were both on a path to fame and celebrity. Talk to me about that and what you learned about yourself through that.
I guess looking back on that those six years, I mean, I was such a baby when Rob and I were together.
We're six seventeen, right.
Seventeen, and we broke up for the last time when we were twenty three, and it was very tumultuous, you know, it was. There was a lot of I felt like a bit of an old stage in the business at that point because I'd been doing it for so long and I was still on the little house on the Prairie when we met, and it had already you know, had been years and he was sort of starting out. He'd done a little bit of television, and so I was able to sort of sit back and watch this
meteoric rise happen. I don't think I think I was prepared for the stuff they came with it. Necessarily. I was prepared for all of the like having to go to premieres and things and award shows and all of that, but I wasn't prepared for the fandom and frankly, the girls and that sort of you know. To me, I always thought that every every girl and woman was my sister. We were sisters, we you know, but it was not evident at all when when I were a couple. I mean,
it was like I didn't exist. They just pushed right past me and stick phone numbers in his pockets and stuff. And that was to say. It was disconcerting. Is doing it doing it a big disservice? It was and horrible. I think I learned a lot about what didn't work for me actually, and what I wouldn't stand for later on.
Those are some of the most valuable lessons.
Well, yeah, they hurt their heart to learn because they usually are born of heartbreak and angst. But those are really valuable and important lessons. And yeah, that it was. You know, we had some really, really really fun times.
But in looking back, I look at the way my life is so easeful now, I look at it back then, and I feel like I was like my shoulders were always up by my ears, always waiting for the next shoe to drop, or something bad to happen, or some I don't know, something untoward or gross or.
Yeah, yeah, do you feel like because you said you started out thinking all women were your sisters? And yeah, I don't know that I started out that way, just as I started acting young too, and I was thrust into this competitive, you know, dog eat dog world where it's every man for himself, man woman child for themselves.
Yeah.
Do you think that the industry had you feeling like that or for other reasons too, or was it.
Just I think I was just I was a bit of a gidget. I always assumed everyone would be my friend. Why not I want to be their friends? Why not be my friend? I didn't understand professional jealousy because I didn't really feel it. But I was definitely on the receiving end of it from other young actresses and other young actresses I was working with, and it I was taken aback by it, and I you know, I was a bit of a puppy about it. I would still come running up, you know, like you want to play.
I want to play, and then get smacked back. It didn't really stop me until I think I hit puberty and I was like, I'm not going to play anymore. I don't. I should clear this person does not want to hang out with me. And I've got friends, I've got a life. I don't need this doing her loss. Yep. But I always gave everyone the benefit of the doubt. Start.
That's good.
Yeah, got hurt a lot, but I made some really wonderful friends along with still friends today.
So that's that's good. That's incredible. Yeah, you didn't go to high school, You didn't go to regular Well, I was sort of.
I mean I went to school on the set, but I actually I went to the Buckley Oh really Yeah. From my whole school career, as they call it, from the grade they have called reading readiness, which is like their version of kindergarten, all the way through my senior year and then when I eventually, I mean I would do commercials and stuff as a little kid, and then when I got little house, I just corresponded the same
assignments and work. And then when we were on Hyapa, if I wasn't working, which was the first couple of years, I would go back to school for three months, three four months.
How was it when you went back to school? Oh?
It was odd. I mean, it wasn't bad when I was little because most of the kids in my class had been in my class since yes, yeah, kindergarten essentially, and so we all knew each other. We'd all had birthdays together, we all grew up together. It wasn't until junior high and high school that it got kind of uncomfortable because I was this weird combination too, of really
awkward because I was super sheltered. So rather than like most a lot or a lot I should say, of Hollywood kids who grew up really fast, I was the opposite. I was still wearing Mary James when I was seventeen.
Do you think that's because you were sheltered being so young in the industry and being on sets and just kind of people reading you a certain way.
I think that and I think it was a conscious decision on my mother's part to shield me from as much of the craziness as possible, because it was it was inevitable that that would happen, so she really kind of built a wall around me to keep me young. So I would go back to school and I would be really kind of dorky and then also but famous, so weird, so awkward, so strange that kids didn't know how to talk to me. And to top it off, I had really bad I had a really bad overbite.
Legendary, legendary, iconic. Everybody wanted that.
Yeah, well, and so I had retainers and stuff. But when we'd go on hiatus, i'd have braces and a neck gear, so I wore that to school. That didn't help.
I'm getting the visual now.
Right, even to the point where like we wore uniforms, which is a great sort of evil. Schoolgirls wore ankle socks, and my mom made me wear knee socks. So there I was in my knee socks, my skirt was extra long, and my neck gear, and I was awkward and famous, so no one knew what the heck to do with me.
God, I love this teenage little preteen Melissa so.
Much angsty squid. I was just an angsty I would slay on the floor in my room with my stereo on and my headphones and listen to janis Ian's at seventeen over and over.
And did you have siblings?
I do have a brother and a sister, and I've had step brothers and stepsisters. Lot.
What's your birth order?
I'm first, You're the first, You're the oldest. First. My brother Jonathan, who was also in little house with me, is second, and my sister Sarah, the mini mogul in the family, is the youngest.
So I'm asking because for my daughter is my oldest. Very similar story to you, the neck, the headgear and the socks and just the sweet innocence, but complete like dorkiness. What about Sarah?
Since Sarah was Oh? I was eleven when Sarah was born, so I was basically like another little mother. I had them put her nursery next to my room. I was so excited to have a baby sister. I would come home from work and feed her and change her and dress her and play with her. And she was she She was the darling of the family. She was also a really tough kid, because she was really really smart. She's still obviously she's genius, but even when she was little,
she was a lot to deal with. She was fun and funny and wide killed and wicked and curious and little bit zany, so having her around was really really fun. She grew up in a completely different household than I did, though, because there's a so many years between us. But there was like a changing of the guard. My parents got divorced when I was six, My father cast away. My mother remarried my sister's dad, and they were She was a different parent with my sister.
Yep, that's what's happened in my family too. And like they say, you've raised the Fiona, the youngest one, so differently than you raised me. I hear that, and I'm like, ooh, well yeah.
Probably yeah, And i get it now that I have kids, and they'll get it when they have kids.
Yes.
When I when I was a girl, I wasn't allowed to have a television in my room. I didn't get the television in my room till I was sixteen. And when I got the television in my room, everybody else got televisions in their room too. They didn't have to wait till they were sixteen. Yeah, just because my parents didn't want to hear I don't have one too. You know, it was just easier to give everyone a television.
But did you ever go through that resentful stage where you were like, this sucks. I had to jump through all these hoops and be you know, not get all the things, and you just come here and get everything. Yeah?
Yeah, I mean no, resentful of my siblings so much and your parents, Yeah, just mad at them because it seemed just wildly unfair. But yeah, I get it now, and I you know, I mean, look, these things are the least of my issues at this point.
That's so true in your book Prairie Tale, you said, no matter how many people told me I was pretty, I just couldn't see it. I kept measuring myself against some imaginary ideal I could never live up to. Where do you think that ideal came from?
Actually, I come from a family of extremely glamorous women. They're like gbore level glamorous. And I think that's true for them too. I think they were always there was always someone prettier, thinner, taller, blonder, or successful, better, better husband, whatever.
There was always sort of I think I probably absorbed a bit of that by osmosis, and I think it was compounded by the sort of knock kneat, neckgear, face back to kind of girlishness, which isn't actually now a strength of mine because she's still in there and it's one years old. To have that come out and just help me to you know, play with the grandchildren or be completely goofy or open in a performance because I have no fear anymore. I think it has served me. But I think a lot of that I saw in
the adults around me. And then on top of it, you know, I'm on set with all of these people who are in their adults, who are competing with one another and being pitted against and up for the same roles and hearing about who got what that they wanted and they didn't get. So it was sort of endemic and all around me.
Yeah, I can totally relate. Yeah, it's I think the industry really kind of does a number on people who absorb that messaging.
It's a problem, and you know, actually it's sort of I mean, it's so part and parcel to to all of the external stuff. It's now permeated everything. Like I think I even talked in that book, and I've talked in my other books, and I blogged about this too. But you know, we do a lot of cross country driving, and it never ceases to amaze me when you're driving
on highways through rural Iowa. Fast food restaurant adds billboards, fast food restaurant, fast food restaurant, freeze the fat, liposuction BBL, fast food.
Yeah, it's bombarded. The young girls today are just bombarded with with.
The images of the surgically enhanced fixed. I mean, good on them that they can do it, but that that's the ideal really really makes me nervous for my granddaughters. And I'm you know, I'm I. I hope that I'll be able to influent when them enough to say, you know, that's actually not real, that's not the fix you're looking for. You don't want to be an influencer. Let's just let's let's center site a little higher daughter.
So, yeah, it's it's challenging. Yes, I'm sure, how did you begin to choose yourself with all of that? And how did you begin to love the way you look?
It probably really hit me right about like after my divorce from Bruce box lightner. I was sort of at peak filler Botox, big boobs. It was. I was like at the apex of that. And I looked at myself in the mirror one day or no, no, no, I looked at a picture of myself. It was a paparazzi photo from some event, and it startled me and I thought, Oh my god, that's not who I am or who
I wanted to be. And so I made a decision to kind of back off all of that, to see what was underneath it and to figure out who I was. And then I met Tim while after that, and I started expressing this to him, and he was like, all for it. Please don't do that. Please don't put anything in your face. First of all, I can't tell how you're feeling. Second of all, you don't look like you. And then when I went to him and I said, I I really want to take out my breast implants permanently.
I want to go. I want I don't want them anymore. I don't want to have to think about them. I don't want to have to, you know, make a decision in my eighties to have them replaced. I just want it done. I want my body back to what it was. I want to feel strong and healthy as I age now. And his immediate reaction was do it, Let's do it, Let's find the best surgeon in Michigan. Let's get it done.
And we did, and so that's just really enforced. That's then I stopped coloring my hair, and then I stopped dressing for other people and dressing for myself and really figuring out, you know, who this person was that I was. I knew why I was on the inside. I wanted the outside to match.
That is so inspiring and incredible.
Oh, bless you, Thank you so much. I feel I feel good, you know. I still I take really good care of myself.
I eat. Yeah, I was gonna say, you're You're always going to be gorgeous until the end of time. That's sweet, But yeah, what do you do now to take care of yourself and stay healthy and vibrant.
I do a lot of yoga. It's my favorite exercise. I think at this age too, it's really helpful for you know, osteoporosis and the flexibility is important. I drink a lot of water. I take really good care of my skin, wear sunscreen, which I always have, my whole life anyway. I eat as well as to be expected. I try to eat as cleanly as possible, but I don't deny myself. If I want to have a shark Heuteri plate, I have a sharkutery plate. If I want a big bolo pasta, I have a big bolo pasta.
I just don't do it all the time. I get a lot of sleep, and I stay away from things that make me uncomfortable and unhappy as much.
As p Yeah, you gotta hang out with joy that makes you look good.
It really does. It changes your whole being being happy, it really does.
And you're sobriety. You you're you've been sober for a long time.
A wild and very very focused on being present too, you know, not numbing out to the things that are around me and not feeling feelings, which is sometimes not very fun but important to get through the other side. Otherwise they well up and come out at the wrong time and the wrong way. And I don't want to do that anymore either. So I just hear a little I don't know.
Yeah, no, you are it is, that's what happens.
Yeah, hopefully, thank god.
Yeah, I'm like, thank you for just making me a more present, more joyful person as I've gotten older, because I was not you know, I didn't know who I was for so so long.
I get it, I really, and that the feeling of inadequacy, and you know that it's hard. It's really so much pressure, so.
Much pressure, and I guess we do it to ourselves, but.
We're expected to. I mean if everybody else is too.
I know, how do you? Yeah, it's it takes a lot of bravery to pave your own road, it really does. And I love seeing people out there that are doing that. I love you know. I've talked to a lot of women, and a lot of women are at least cutting back on alcohol or have stopped drinking it. I stopped drinking alcohol a couple of years ago.
Now, fantastic.
I feel so much better for it. Yeah, not just like you know, physically, but emotionally and mentally different person.
Yeah. Well you know that that that that guilt, I mean, there's no other way to there's no other word for it is gone of you know, and and then not remembering what happened or what you said, or then remembering what you did or what you said, and it's you know, not who you are. It's just if we want to be authentically who we are, we can't. We can't. Is that take us away from that and we lose your everything, your spiritual connection, your grounded in connection to yourself.
Do you ever have like moments of weakning? Is like, how do you keep yourself on the path?
Gosh, it's been such a long time. I think staying saying present in the moment and really honestly avoiding really uncomfortable situations. And when I see uncomfortable situations, the ones that make me make my skin crawl, I I like what like what like? I'm not really great at a big Hollywood to do. I never know.
I don't like them.
I couldn't do them unless I was really altered. Yes, I just I get embarrassed. I'm also a really big fan. I love films and television and theater, and so when I am in a room full of people I admire, I get like scared and nervous and shy and uncomfortable. I always assume no one's gonna know me or remember me, and I just I don't. I don't like getting all dressed up. I don't. It's I don't. It's like the height of that whole competitive thing too. Yeah, and stand
a certain way and the expectations are all there. I just those are the things that I would prefer to avoid if I. If I do go to anything, I won't go alone. I'll always go with Tim because he'll make me laugh all the time and that makes me feel so much more comfortable. Yeah. So the things like that, that that, that's the kind of stuff that I don't like really.
Yeah, because then you just get so anxious and so kind of out of body that you're like, oh, I wish I could just have a drink, like.
Watching every word that I say because I'm afraid I'm gonna say something dumb. So I just I'd rather just avoid those things if I can. I mean, I'll go.
Way off to But yeah, I wasn't born for this.
No me, neither me neither. It's again, and it's more of that tiny talk. It's all those irrelevant, little snippets of conversation with people you don't really know that don't change anything or do anything. They used to tell us to go to those things because networking was important.
He'll tell us that.
It's not true. It doesn't make a difference. No, one's going to see you at his screening and go, ah, I'm gonna put her in my next film.
You really believe that, Okay, because I've always been told that I don't network. I don't, you know, put myself out there. I literally stay home in garden all the time. And I've always felt guilty or somehow like why am I? Why can't I do that? I must be a failure at this like and amazing feel better to know that you feel that way too.
Yeah, And I just don't. I just I honestly, I believe that if some wonderful job is meant to happen, it's going to come. Whether I'm on a red carpet or not.
That's true. If it's meant to be, it will happen.
If it's meant to be, it's going to happen. There's no need to to pursue it in that way. It just makes me just talking eives.
Okay, we'll stop talking about it because I don't want to talk about it either. Okay, before I let you go, Melissa Gilbert, what was your last I Choose me moments?
My last I Choose me moment. It's kind of a daily thing. I I I have a bubble bath every day and that's where I read whatever book i'm reading. I sit in the bath, I turn on music, I close the door. One dog lays next to me. The other dog is not allowed in because she's too splashy and loud. The quiet dog lays in there in the bathroom with me. I close the door. Sometimes I have tea, usually water, and I sit in the bubble bath and I read every day.
That is glorious. Such a simple thing. But it's really so.
Simple, but it's so decompressing, and it gets me out of my head and it gets me in my imagination, and it's relaxing and constructive, and it feels pampering.
It really does, because the upkeep is real, like.
Oh yeah, things are following the more. Sometimes I feel like, like Moleihan and Nervel, stream and death become like its flaking and falling off. That is important.
Baths are important, and the moisturizer after them always important.
But moisturizer and sunscreen become your two best friends as you ag Yeah, I.
Read somewhere that someone said reading twenty minutes a day can lower your blood pressure, lower your risk of heart disease. All kinds of things. Well, there you go, there you go.
I'll take it.
Thank you so much for being on the podcast.
Thank you, bye bye,