thirty
In the fall of my last term as SAG president, I received a call about an eleven-year-old boy named Dustin Meraz. Dustin was a patient at Children’s Hospital in Los Angeles, and he was dying of an exceptionally horrible form of cancer called neuroblastoma. After being told he wanted to be an actor, I arranged for Dustin to receive an honorary SAG card. Then I decided to turn the presentation into a full-fledged ceremony.
If I couldn’t use my powers as president for good, what good were they? So I made a few calls and showed up at Children’s Hospital with Will Smith, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Stephen Collins. They helped me give Dustin his SAG card in front of his family, his roommate, and the hospital staffers. It was an afternoon that none of us will ever forget. Dustin passed away just a few weeks later. Not a day goes by that I don’t think of him. His words are engraved on a bracelet I wear on my left wrist: “Today is a gift, have fun.” Could there be better advice?
Later that year, I was invited back for a Christmas party with the kids on Dustin’s unit. I brought Leo, Spider-Man’s Tobey Maguire, and my sister Sara. During the party, Lori Butterworth, the founder of the Children’s Hospice & Palliative Care Coalition, took me aside and said she noticed that I had an aptitude for relating to these extremely sick children.
I had visited sick children in hospitals since my first season on Little House, and somehow I always wound up on the pediatric oncology floor. But my so-called aptitude may actually have been my curiosity as an adult to learn how to live from these children.
I went out to lunch with Lori, aka “the blond tornado,” and her cofounder, Devon Dabbs. They explained the massive amount of resources and money needed to take care of terminally ill children and then pitched me on helping them raise awareness for the Coalition’s work. I immediately agreed. Just putting together the words “hospice” and “children” seemed wrong. But they had my commitment with the first mention of a single statistic—that 92 percent of children that die in the United States die in uncontrolled pain.
As far as I was concerned that figure was disgusting, frightening, and thoroughly unacceptable. Part of the problem was silly law. Children had to qualify for hospice care. They often fought their illnesses harder and longer than adults simply because they were children. Hospice was suddenly taken away if they showed any improvement; there was no transition. I promised to do whatever I could to help lower that statistic and change the law, even if we had to do it one child at a time.
In February 2005, I said my good-byes as president of the Screen Actors Guild at the union’s annual awards show. Bruce was out of town, so I took Sam and Lee, who looked incredibly handsome in their tuxedos, Gucci shoes, black shirts, and pink ties, which they gamely wore to match my pink dress with black flowers.
My stepsons were especially impressed when my gorgeous pretend daughter Jennifer Garner mentioned in her thank-you as winner for Best Actress in a Drama that I had once played her mother (I could see everyone in the auditorium quickly doing the math; we’re eight years apart). Then at the after-party Kiefer Sutherland literally swept me off my feet with a giant bear hug, and while holding me in his arms, he pressed his lips to my ear and whispered, “You look so beautiful.”
“Watch it, those are my stepsons standing to my side,” I said, blushing.
He put me down, stepped back, and then, while looking directly at Sam and Lee, said, “Boys, I’m in love with your stepmother.”
“Awesome,” Sam said.
“Cool,” Lee chimed.
It was a wonderful night and I made it through sober.
Three weeks later, members of SAG and AFTRA voted to accept a new three-year contract with studios covering theatrical and TV production. The $200 million deal I had spent years helping to craft and negotiate had passed. I considered it the crowning achievement of my two terms as SAG’s chief elected officer.
My joy was tempered when my dear friend and colleague Bob Pisano decided to resign as executive director. As he put it, he had become part of the problem. The board hired Greg Hessinger in his place. I would miss Bob horribly, but I was pleased the Guild would be in Greg’s very capable hands.
Unable to slow down, I managed to set sane limits and boundaries. I promised Bruce no SAG-related work before 8:00 a.m. or after 8:00 p.m. Between those hours, the family had me to themselves. I was also sober—six months and counting at that point—which put the kibosh on whooping it up at parties and events. Without a drink in my hand, I felt uncomfortable in social situations.
We stayed home most nights. Bruce and I would read, watch TV, and have friends or family over for dinner. The closest I got to life in the fast lane was the express line at the grocery store. But I was okay with driving carpools and helping with homework. Laura Ingalls Wilder once said, “It’s the sweet, simple things of life which are the real ones, after all.” She was right.
After nearly forty years in show business, I devoted time and energy to figuring out myself. Sobriety was one facet, and I took it more seriously than ever. Knowing that my life depended on avoiding alcohol, I committed to working on the fourth step in AA’s twelve-step program. I had never done that before.
I was able to tackle the first three steps without any difficulty. I could admit that I was powerless over alcohol. I could believe a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity. And I could turn my life over to God as I understood Him. But I had always procrastinated when it came to the fourth step—making a searching and fearless moral inventory of myself. Who wants to face up to all the darkness and bad things she has done in her life?
For me, it wasn’t a matter of whether I wanted to do this anymore. I needed to take a long, honest look at myself. One could say that all the time I had spent looking at myself in the mirror or on-screen, whether it was at my nose, my boobs, a fancy gown, or my face after bloodying it on the bedpost, were either missed opportunities or a gradual lead-up to this more crucial assessment of the way I looked on the inside.
With help from my therapist, I went to work trying to understand why I had made various choices throughout my adult life and what had driven me to this point. For months, I tackled the big questions that seemed to define me: Why was I so overly competent? Why was I constitutionally unable to ask anyone for help? Why was I unable to say no? Why, why, why was I the way I was?
The answer was like a nasty joke. Thanks to a lifetime spent on TV, I had been popular, admired, and loved my whole life by everyone except myself. Inside, I couldn’t get past the first twenty-four hours of my life, when my mother and father had given me away. I was made to see and accept that the motivating factor behind many of my decisions was feeling I had to prove I was worthy and lovable.
I worked through that with exercises. My therapist had me imagine myself as a five-year-old and write a letter to my birth mother, Cathy, asking why she hadn’t kept me, why she had gotten pregnant in the first place, and if she ever wondered what had happened to me. Then she had me answer those questions. I was shocked when I found myself in the guise of my birth mother, writing back that she had put me up for adoption to give me a chance at a better life than she could provide.
“Why hadn’t I ever thought of it in that way?” I asked my therapist.
“Here’s a better question,” she said. “How are you going to go forward now that you have thought of it?”
There was no short, simple answer. My healing was an evolving process of recognition, awareness, and understanding. I didn’t have to look for fixes outside of myself, not in work, men, or alcohol; I could find them in myself. I didn’t have to worry about proving that I was lovable; I was already lovable. I could even love myself. I didn’t have to be perfect; there was no such thing as perfect. I didn’t have to worry about getting someplace; I was always exactly where I needed to be.
I had always been afraid that if I started to let out some of that pain, fear, and betrayal, I would start to cry and never stop. But finally confronting those wounds, whether through writing letters or just talking, helped. Sure, I cried—but not for long. And I felt better afterward.
I learned that a feeling is just that—a feeling. I didn’t have to stay sad my whole life. Nor did I have to stay mad. Likewise, I wasn’t able to stay happy all the time either. I was better off when I experienced everything life dealt me and then moved on to the next thing—whatever that turned out to be.
I also learned how to ask for help when I needed it. I was blessed to have a great circle of girlfriends around me, my own league of extraordinary women: Sandy, Amanda, Cordelia, Tina, Leilani, Colleen, Ali, and Kari, girlfriends I could call on when I needed help, and they were always there. I also had a very close relationship with my sister Sara. By then our age difference seemed virtually nonexistent. We have all been through so much together—marriages, divorces, births, deaths. Each one of them has contributed something unique to my life. Each of them has been a part of my history and I have been a part of theirs. What a miracle for someone like me who trusted no one, especially other women, to have a circle of women who share my secrets and in turn share theirs.
After a couple years, I could see both therapy and sobriety paying off. I stayed open and aware in most situations, if I got down I didn’t stay down, and above all, I tried to behave as if my number one goal was to return in my next life as a fat, happy house cat whose only task would be to look for the warm spot.
In October 2006, I was elected president of the board for the Children’s Hospice & Palliative Care Coalition. Six months later, I testified in front of the California state senate about the need to change hospice eligibility requirements. I also took a course in pediatric end-of-life nursing and got involved with kids and their families. That’s where I felt like I was at my best.
I know it’s where I have been able to do my most memorable work, as I am able to make a difference in a child’s life. If I can help a child die pain-free and with dignity, then I’ve done something extraordinary.
Take sixteen-year-old Nick Snow. On the day we met at Children’s Hospital, he had battled and beaten neuroblastoma, and I couldn’t stop staring at his Afro. It may have been the world’s biggest. Leo DiCaprio was with me that day and he said what I was thinking: “Dude, that’s a hell of an Afro.” Nick explained he grew it for all the years he didn’t have hair.
His will was like the Energizer bunny. He didn’t know when to stop. He flunked hospice twice—both times he rebounded slightly after new treatments. He was aware of what was going on each time hospice was pulled from him. His belief was that kids should be able to have hospice in palliative care whenever they needed, not just when the rules allowed. As he aptly said, it was cruel to make parents choose between curing and caring.
Nick eventually died not from cancer but from a perforated bowel. I think he was tired from years of fighting and he just needed to rest. Thanks to him and others like him, though, we were able to pass the Nick Snow Act in California in 2009. This was the first big step in abolishing the hospice eligibility regulations for children, and the first step in creating a comprehensive, compassionate hospice benefit for children; the idea will sweep across California in stages. Now the goal is to spread that enlightened policy change across the United States.
In Akron, I met David, seventeen, who, without being able to speak a word, let me know that although he was scared as he battled leukemia, he was determined to win. He emanated courage. Then there was Jessica, a little girl who had bone cancer. When I asked her if she was afraid, she said, “No, not for me. But I worry about my mom and dad.” She squeezed my hand and said, “I believe that a thousand years on earth is one day in heaven. So by the time I’m sitting down for my first lunch, my mom and dad will be there.”
I had a friend whose baby died suddenly and unexpectedly. I discussed this tragedy with my son Michael. My little philosopher reasoned that this baby had been an angel. He went even further, postulating that all children start out as angels, flying down from heaven. At some point, their wings fall off. But my friend’s baby hadn’t lost his wings, and so he had to fly back.
I decided that all kids who died were angels who hadn’t lost their wings. As for why they had to die in pain, I could only ask, who would do that to an angel?
These courageous children reinforced my belief in heaven. I’m not sure there is a hell, but there absolutely has to be something better. There has to be a pony in this barn full of crap. It just has to get easier. Which begs the questions, why is life so complicated, why is it such a puzzle, why do most of us find it such a struggle on so many different levels?
My therapist shared a theory she had come across, and I liked it. It held that before making your next journey in this life, your soul sits at a large, circular conference table and chooses the souls who are going to be part of your life. As for which particular people would be chosen, I figured they would be individuals from previous lives with whom there was still unfinished business.
My son, Michael Boxleitner, is definitely one of those people. His arrival into this world taught me about the miracle of life, and every day thereafter has been a reminder to me to appreciate it. Other people provided different lessons. Sam and Lee taught me that siblings do not have to be connected by blood to truly love and care for one another. More important, I learned that my love for each of my children is equal, whether they grew under my heart or in it.
Bo was the catalyst who pushed me to confront my own birth and taught me to begin to set boundaries, and I dragged Rob into my life to show me it was okay to be free with myself. Michael Landon showed me the most important thing was family and home. So he had three families and three homes—he tried. Bruce has enhanced my personal growth; we have taught each other to stay and work out situations rather than run away and miss the stuff that matters, the sweet, simple things.
It’s interesting that the two most significant relationships in my life before Bruce were both with men who were cheats, as was I, and not for a second have I ever thought Bruce has been with another woman. To me, that’s an example of healing and growth.
Why did I pick my mother, Barbara? I think I brought her into my life to teach me how to love unconditionally and, most important, to forgive. I have come to feel the same way about my birth mother, too. Forgiveness is a big theme in my healing process. After any type of emotional pain or distress, it’s the only sure pathway to love again.
There’s a sense of relief in forgiving people. Take my father, who chose to smoke, drink, and not take care of himself properly instead of spending more time with me. Do whatever you want to your body as long as you don’t have a child. But once you’re a parent, it’s not your life anymore. You have to do everything you can to stay alive. My daddy didn’t.
He was the last person with whom I wanted to be mad, but I had to learn to let myself be angry with him—and then to forgive him. Once that happened, the real reason he was in my life became apparent. It was so I could dance.
If there’s one person I have had a hard time forgiving, it’s myself. Clearly, that’s what this journey has been about, at least thus far. I can think I’m making progress until I get to my son Dakota, who looms as both a mystery and a challenge. I am still trying to forgive myself for not being the mother I thought I could have been by letting him go to Texas. He reminds me of the work I still have left.
That’s the point. The more people who enter my life and challenge me to learn and grow, the closer I get to the house cat in the next life.
By summer 2008 my mind and heart were in the best place of my life. I had over three years of good, solid sobriety under my belt and a support group in AA that was like a second family to me. My first family provided me with an immeasurable sense of safety and courage. I remember one Sunday afternoon when I was sitting with my sister Sara, watching Dakota and Michael play with her two little children, and I was imbued by a satisfying sense of warmth, closeness, and growth.
It was the kind of feeling a woman gets when she feels the passage of time, sees the lines in her face, and knows every bit of life that happened was worthwhile. Not coincidentally, I began an exciting new chapter soon after doing something that had terrified me all my life: I signed on to do a musical version of Little House on the Prairie at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis.
I’ve always been terrified of singing in front of people. It scares me to the very core of my being.
Ability is not the issue. As a child, I sang all the time with my dad. Apparently, I had perfect pitch, too. I grew up wanting to be a triple threat—an actor, singer, and dancer, like Shirley MacLaine, Patti LuPone, Ann-Margret, and Liza Minnelli. They are women who can do it all, and do it all so well. I just needed the opportunity, and then I had to get over the fear.
To prepare for the show, I spent nearly a year taking weekly voice lessons with my voice coach in L.A., Eric Vetrow. He got sound to come out of my voice that I didn’t know existed within and taught me little tricks, like saving my throat by sipping Ricola cough drops steeped in hot water. Before leaving for Minneapolis, I took a signed photo of my father (it said, “To Missy-do, Love Dad”), shrunk it down, and had two copies made.
At the first rehearsal, I put one of those photos in my pocket and waited for my turn. One by one, the principal cast members stood and sang their numbers. I admired the wonderful, seemingly effortless sound they made. They seemed to disappear into a whole other person, or rather, their person seemed to expand into a greater being, this being who was transformed by music, inflated and imbued by a feeling they were able to express confidently, joyously, and pleasingly with their voice. They were singers.
As I waited, my heart thumped nervously, uncontrollably, almost like it does when I have an anxiety attack. I worked feverishly to gain control of my nerves so I could sing. Finally, my turn came, and I stood up, chest out, hands clasped behind my back so no one would see them shaking. I was like a courageous soldier marching into battle. Then, standing rigid and still, I began to sing.
I’m getting anxious just remembering the moment. Despite all my coaching and hard work, I heard, as did everyone else, a tiny, soft, and scared voice come out of me. It was mortifying. I got angry at myself. My brain screamed, “Dammit, pull yourself together!”
I don’t exactly know what happened next, other than I reached down into my pocket and touched my hand to the picture of my father, and per my therapist’s instruction I pictured him sitting in the front row. Then I stepped a little bit forward and felt my singing voice grow stronger and stronger. The rest is a blur except for the very end of the song, when I heard myself belting out the lyrics not only with confidence but also on pitch!
Just like that, it was over and everybody was applauding, and I thought, Okay, I can do this. I have a voice.
As for the rest of the rehearsal process, I immersed myself in it. There was a lot to tackle, and I felt excited and blessed. Normally, opportunities for actresses my age begin to wane, and yet there I was at forty-four starting a whole new facet of my career.
I was equally blessed to have such a wonderful cast and creative team around me. All of us bonded instantly, and I grew especially (and appropriately) close to Steve Blanchard, who was playing Pa. He and Bruce hit it off immediately. Before he returned home, Bruce even asked Steve to take care of me, something that would have been unheard-of in the past. But our marriage was now that solid.
The strangest part of the whole experience for me was grappling with the idea of playing Ma instead of Laura. Talk about an identity crisis. Early in rehearsals at the Guthrie Theater, I would answer whenever someone called for Laura or Half Pint. Later, during the scenes when Pa and Laura (Kara Lindsay) were onstage, I stood in the wings and wept, remembering Mike and me and watching the two of them create that bond in a whole new and beautiful way.
Rehearsals flew by. During the daytime, we added new songs, changed scenes, and moved things around. At night, we performed in front of a live audience willing to risk their money on a work-in-progress. My brain was boggled by all the information I needed to digest. It was dizzying, challenging, and scary to know the audience would be coming in expecting to see something special. I had so much to learn. I also felt the pressure of the Little House legacy. Would we be able to catch lightning in a bottle again?
On the day tickets went on sale for the official run, the Guthrie’s website crashed. Hundreds of fans stood in line at the theater. I greeted people and marveled at the dozens of girls who showed up dressed as Laura, their hair in pigtails. For opening night, Bruce flew in with all the kids except for Dakota, who stayed home with strep throat. He would have come, but I vowed to make it through the run without getting sick.
After the two-and-a-half-hour performance, Bruce and the family engulfed me backstage. All of us were sobbing from joy. Elated and relieved, I sighed, “Oh man, I did it. This is really good.” A few weeks later, I was backstage before a show and heard someone call out, “Caroline!” I automatically said, “Yes?” When I learned they had meant a girl in the company named Caroline, I thought, Well, I guess I’m over the Laura thing now. But as I left the theater that night I walked into a crowd of autograph seekers who shouted, “Laura! Laura! We love you, Laura!”
Ultimately, it didn’t matter what people called me. I didn’t have to be one person to anyone, including myself. Instead of worrying about who I was, the key was to focus on who I could become. I could have many different identities, including wife, mother, stepmother, friend, ex-wife, daughter, scared little girl, actress, former child star, Half Pint, former SAG president—and on certain occasions when everything was working in my favor, I heard guys whistle, “Hey, sexy.” That was okay, too.
Somewhere on my journey from Baby Girl to grown woman I had discovered myself. I had also become the triple threat that once seemed possible only in my dreams. I could act, sing, and dance. I could also laugh, cry, and forgive. I didn’t worry as much about who I was compared to who I could become.
In October, about two weeks before the play closed, I went with the kids in the show—Kara Lindsay, who played Laura, Jenn Gambatese, who played Mary, and Kevin Massey, who played Almanzo—on a five-hour drive to Walnut Grove, Minnesota, and De Smet, South Dakota, the real-life homes of Laura Ingalls Wilder and her family. Despite numerous invitations, I had not visited either place. The timing finally felt right now that I was old enough to appreciate it.
We arrived unannounced in Walnut Grove and visited the museum, where one display included the fireplace mantel from the set of the TV series. When no one was looking, I smelled it to see if it still contained any of the familiar scents from the set. It didn’t, but memories of my girlhood flooded my heart and mind. We later ate lunch at Nellie’s Café and walked along Plumb Creek.
In De Smet, our next stop, the owners of our bed-and-breakfast arranged a tour of the town. We walked through the house Pa had built, where I marveled at the cabinets he had made for Ma, and then we were ushered into the Laura Ingalls Wilder museum, where our guide opened a vault containing the most special items. She pulled out a nightgown and several handkerchiefs.
“These were Laura’s,” she said.
I instinctively reached out to touch them, then pulled my hand back and asked, “May I?”
“Yes,” she said.
We sped back to Minneapolis, where all of us felt we put on one of the most inspired performances of the entire run. I climbed into bed late that night, exhausted but unable to fall asleep. I kept thinking about the flood of memories I had experienced after touching Laura’s nightgown and handkerchief. While my fingers ran over the cotton fabric, I relived everything from my first audition for Little House to the present: happiness, sadness, heartbreak, and love. For someone who grew up not being allowed to feel anything, I now felt so much.
Indeed, in those sweet, simple things I felt the heft not of a career but of a life—an authentic life.
I looked forward to more.