Melissa Gilbert Opens Up About How ‘Little House on the Prairie’ Affects Her Aspirations for the Future
Playing Laura Ingalls on “Little House on the Prairie” taught star Melissa Gilbert a lot, including what her aspirations looked like for the future.
After her time on the set of “Little House on the Prairie,” Gilbert struggled a lot as a child actor in Hollywood. She felt sucked into the lifestyle of celebrities, constantly worrying about her image and outward appearance. She also spent most of her time in the city. Which was a vast change from the rural life she played out on the classic TV show.
In a recent interview with Smashing Interviews Magazine, Melissa Gilbert opened up about how the show impacted her aspirations for the future.
“I hear from people a lot, especially young women, how they wish they’d had a childhood like Laura’s was portrayed on Little House on the Prairie,’” Gilbert revealed. “Even though I played her, I also wished for the same thing.”
She added, “It took a global pandemic for me to find the lifestyle. Not that I was completely off the grid or entirely without any sort of modern comforts. But I’d always wanted to have land, to have chickens, to have a garden. To be somewhat independent in many different ways, to also contribute to the plan. To give back, to try to leave a smaller carbon footprint, and just be a conscientious human.”
During the pandemic, Melissa Gilbert and her husband, Timothy Busfield, moved into a cabin in the Catskills. They fixed up the cabin together and live there now, growing their own food.
“I think that being on the show inspired me to have this life that I have now, for sure. One hundred percent,” Gilbert concluded.
How Melissa Gilbert Now Lives Out Her Aspirations in Real-Time
Before the pandemic and meeting her husband, Melissa Gilbert was scared to follow her aspirations. She might not have ever really known what they were, to begin with. But over time, Gilbert’s realized that she wanted the nature-filled lifestyle depicted in “Little House on the Prairie.”
And she’s got it. Gilbert and Busfield fixed up a rustic cabin in the Catskill Mountains, which she named Cabbage. The name is a mix between “cabin” and “cottage,” per Smashing Interviews Magazine. Gilbert details her home plenty in her new memoir, “Back to the Prairie: A Home Remade, a Life Rediscovered,” which releases today, May 10.
Its description reads, “She trades Botox treatments for DIY projects, power lunching for gardening, and raising chickens. And soon her life is rediscovered anew in her own little house in the Catskills.”
Melissa Gilbert learned how to finally embrace the life she always wanted. And if you read her memoir, you can learn just how she accomplished that.
