Bonus: Melissa Gilbert goes 'Back to the Prairie'

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 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 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. 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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

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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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, 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. 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 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 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 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

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 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

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, 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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.

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 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 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. 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

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 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, 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 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, 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, 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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, 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 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? 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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, 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, 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 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 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 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.

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 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 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 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,

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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 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 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, 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

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 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 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,

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, 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, 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

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 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,