She Was Given Up at Birth—Now She’s a Famous TV Star
This Girl Was Given Up by Her Birth Parents & Handed to a Family That Didn’t Plan to Adopt – Now, She’s a Successful TV Star
This actress gave the impression of having it all on screen: notoriety, charisma, and a picture-perfect life. Off-screen, however, her narrative started with an unexpected beginning: a baby that no one intended to retain.
She was abandoned at infancy by parents who were unable to nurture her, and she was later entrusted to a family who had no intention of adopting her before she rose to fame as a TV personality. She grew up believing a reassuring story about gifted, successful parents who, out of love and necessity, put her up for adoption.
However, the reality was much more nuanced, as she disclosed years later in her open memoir. Beneath the story she had been fed was a reality of challenges, family secrets, and doubts about her true origins.
Adoption & Early Life
She was given a temporary name on May 8, 1964, in a now-closed hospital in downtown Los Angeles. “My name at birth was Baby Girl Darlington,” she remembered. She then learned that Cathy Wood and David Darlington were her biological parents.
The actress grew raised believing a carefully crafted story of her origins throughout her early years. She had been informed that although her parents adored her, the time was just wrong and that she was the child of a prima ballerina and a Rhodes Scholar. She claimed, “I always knew I was adopted,” in her autobiography, “Prairie Tale.”
However, maturity revealed that her father was a sign painter and stock car racer rather than a scholar, and her mother, while a dancer, was not a well-known ballerina.
Both of them had previous marriages. Each of them had three kids. They decided they couldn’t afford a seventh child after running off together, getting pregnant, and moving in with their six kids. Therefore, they placed me for adoption,” she said.
Like her birth, her adoption story came as a surprise. She was adopted by Paul Gilbert and Barbara Crane-Gilbert within twenty-four hours after her birth. They were ultimately responsible for giving her the name that the world would eventually know. Her birth parents and her adoptive parents led quite different lives.
Paul’s career in entertainment was varied. Before a fall on a trapeze ended that chapter, he was a young aerialist with a family circus. During World War II, he reinvented himself by enlisting in the Army Air Corps and went on to become a talented actor, comedian, and musician.
He played the French horn on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” tap-danced, sang, and even included acrobatics into his act. He is famous for tripping on his way to the microphone, flipping in mid-air, falling on his back, and getting up to complete the show. He also had appearances on early TV shows.
He performed as the main act in nightclubs and costarred in movies like “So This Is Paris” (1955), showcasing his versatility by singing, dancing, juggling, and playing several instruments. He produced the oddball comedy “3 Nuts in Search of a Bolt,” which was about three eccentrics, when he was in his forties.
Harry Crane, a struggling comic book artist and comic book writer, and his wife, Julia, reared Barbara in Flatbush, Brooklyn. She moved to Los Angeles at the age of eighteen to pursue a career in acting because she had already set her sights on it. She worked in salons, lived in the renowned Studio Club, and starred in movies including “Sorority Girl” and “Unwed Mothers.”
Before meeting Paul, who swept her off her feet and married her in Houston, Barbara was even briefly engaged to comic Don Rickles in her early twenties.
Years later, the actress’s godmother Mitzi started talking about the day her adoptive parents took her home from the hospital during a family get-together soon after her stepfather’s passing. “Well, imagine what a shock it was for me!” Barbara said abruptly, interrupting the laughter with an honest admission.
Surprised, everyone turned to face her and her mother. “We weren’t even looking,” Barbara remarked. Then I received a call asking if I wanted a baby that was up for grabs. She turned to face her daughter. “I gave your father a call. ‘Yes, that’s the one,’ he said while driving. “Go get it.”
She replied to her mother with surprise, “It? You’re always calling me ‘thing.'” Her mother went on to say, “Well, actually, you weren’t even born yet.”
However, as she adapted to living in a busy show business environment, an invisible problem that no one else could see and that she was unable to express was bubbling beneath the surface.
Being Raised with a Disability
The actress disclosed that she suffers from misophonia, a neurological disorder that results in intense emotional responses to commonplace noises. It was frequently intolerable to film scenes on set, particularly in classrooms with other kids.
In an interview, she recalled, “I would want to run away so badly if any of the kids chewed gum or ate or tapped their fingernails on the table.” “I would turn beet red and my eyes would fill up with tears and I’d just sit there feeling absolutely miserable and horribly guilty for feeling so hateful towards all these people — people I loved.”
She carried this unseen burden for years without realizing it had a name. She only recently learned that there was assistance available when she contacted the Center for Misophonia at Duke University. ‘I need help,’ I wrote in a haphazard manner. “Help me, please,” she said. Later, she had cognitive behavioral treatment for 16 weeks.
A deeper, more profound quiet that would go unnoticed for decades loomed within her family while she silently struggled with the sounds that disturbed her.
Finding Out the Real Story of Her Father
When the actress was eleven years old, she was informed that her father had passed away from a stroke. But long after she reached maturity, she discovered a secret that changed her entire worldview.
She revealed, “I was 45 when I found out that my father had taken his own life,” during a TV debate. “That was a very deeply hidden secret from pretty much everybody in my life.”
She openly discussed how that finding compelled her to face a new, deep loss on the anniversary of his death years later. She experienced a new wave of sadness when she grew to the same age as her father when he passed away. She chooses to remember him with compassion and understanding rather than allowing grief to define her.
Despite the tragic realities of her personal life, the world recognized her for something very different: her iconic on-screen roles.
Highlights of My Career: From Child Star to Celebrated Actress
Naturally, the world learned that she was Melissa Gilbert. On the iconic television series “Little House on the Prairie,” which aired from 1974 to 1983, she became well-known as Laura Ingalls. In 1984, she played the same character again in the television film “Little House: Bless All the Dear Children.”
She was just 19 years old when “Little House” and its spinoffs ended, and she had already received an Emmy nomination for her performance as Helen Keller in the 1979 rendition of “The Miracle Worker” and a Golden Globe nomination for her work.
Her career lasted much beyond her early notoriety. In addition to appearing in well-known television programs including “7th Heaven” (2005), “Secrets and Lies” (2015), and “The Night Shift” (2015), Melissa went on to star in a number of television films, such as “The Christmas Pageant” (2011) and “When We Last Spoke” (2019).
But even with her success, there were drawbacks to being in the public eye. “As a kid actor I twisted myself into being what anybody wanted me to be at any given time,” she said. And that caused me a great deal of emotional and mental suffering. I never truly gave myself permission to be who I truly am.
In the end, Melissa decided to abandon the fast-paced lifestyle of Hollywood in favor of something far more realistic.
She now operates a new business and leads a peaceful farm life.
Melissa has been living a more tranquil life on a 14-acre farm in Sullivan County, New York, in recent years. She married Timothy Busfield, an Emmy Award-winning actor and director, in 2013, and the two of them share their Catskill Mountains home.
They lead a pleasantly active life together. She tends to their land and gardens during the day. She explained the difficulties of farm life in an interview with CBS Sunday Morning in 2020, saying, “It’s very rustic.” Take a look at my hands; I have blisters from shoveling, and dirt is all over the place. I simply gave up.
She refers to their home as “our little house in the Catskills,” a reference to her well-known position. Apart from overseeing their farm, the pair also likes to maintain a garden at their cabin and cultivate their own food. In addition, they keep hens, and they just got a puppy named Chicago.
Timothy and Melissa have eight grandchildren together. In addition, Melissa has two sons: Michael from her marriage to Bruce Boxleitner and Dakota from her marriage to Bo Brinkman. Far from the pressures of Hollywood, she now finds happiness in the family-oriented life they have created.
Melissa has been able to concentrate on what really matters thanks to her uncomplicated lifestyle. Looking back on the years she spent filming the TV program, she says it helped instill principles in her that she carried with her long after the cameras stopped running.
“I absorbed so much without even realizing what I was learning really important life lessons about family community tolerance,” Melissa stated. She summed up her thoughts on mountain living in a 2022 interview by saying, “This is what I’ve always wanted.”
In addition to moving to the Catskills, Melissa reexamined her approach to aging. Under pressure from a society that prioritized looks, she had undergone plastic surgery and used Botox and fillers for years. She ultimately made the decision to let those expectations go.
Melissa is at last at ease after removing herself from those demands. “I was always trying too hard to fit the mold that someone else wanted,” she stated. I’m at last content with who I am. I feel very happy, relieved, and thankful.”
But living in the country was only one aspect of her makeover. As the founder of Modern Prairie, she also discovered a fresh approach to empowering others, especially women facing later life stages. Her own changing perspectives on aging and how society regards older women are the inspiration for it.
She openly discussed how the retail and beauty industries have been sending the wrong message to women of her generation for years in a 2023 interview. “There’s no such thing!” she clarified. It is disparaging and humiliating. It’s incorrect to think that we’re attempting to instill a fear of aging in individuals. Growing older is a blessing. I like to think of myself as aging with gratitude.
However, Modern Prairie is a community as well as a lifestyle brand. Melissa’s goal was to establish a place where women could interact. She clarified, “Women need to know they’re not alone,” “We can always count on someone to support us, walk in front of us, walk behind us, or hold us up if necessary.
She consistently interacts with ladies on the app and remains actively committed in the community. They interact over lighter subjects like hobbies, recipes, or acquiring new skills, as well as more important ones like bereavement and life transitions. They also exchange advise and offer support.
Melissa uses Modern Prairie to redefine aging and to educate women that this stage of life is one of resilience, community, and ongoing development.
Her journey is resolute, encompassing stardom, hidden family issues, surprise adoption, and finding serenity in simplicity. Whether she is managing her farm, running her company, or sharing her story, Melissa inspires others by living life on her own terms, away from the demands of celebrity.
There is more to the story than peaceful daily routines while residing on the farm; Melissa previously related how they unexpectedly discovered the land.
Melissa stated that her husband discovered a cute-looking property on Zillow, a real estate marketplace, that was listed for a fair price, as reported on September 17, 2022. On the outside, it appeared “sad.” They proceeded to take a look.
It wasn’t any better inside. It was filled with the possessions of the former owner and had a musty odor. There were boxes of cereal in the cupboard, rotting deer heads on the walls, bars of soap, and bottles of shampoo in the bathtub.
However, after much work had been done on it, Melissa and Timothy believed it had the potential to be something extraordinary, even though it appeared to be uninhabitable. In 2018, they paid $98,000 for the 14-acre property in upstate New York and set to work.
They started remodeling the house, installing new plumbing, a gas tank, and a boiler. There are now many potted plants on the mantle of the home’s fireplace. There are maroon couches in the living room, a wooden staircase leading to the second floor, and a bookshelf in one corner.
There is a front porch with potted plants, outdoor chairs, and stairs that lead to the ground outside the entrance. Melissa may now freely cultivate vegetables in her garden, fulfilling her lifelong dream of living on a farm. She raises chickens as part of her chicken coop.
In contrast to their time in long-running programs, where they were paid well, Melissa and Timothy now operate on a gig-by-gig basis. In contrast to the lifestyle that many people think celebrities lead, the two have a lot of responsibilities and must budget for everything just like everyone else because they receive little to no income.
“Like [most] people, we live on a budget,” she remarked. We work on a gig basis. At the moment, neither of us is starring in a long-running series. Fifty years ago, I was. I’m not sure where folks believe the money has disappeared to.
They cultivate their own food, and Melisaa posts pictures of her abundant vegetable harvests on Instagram. She produces an abundance of fruits and vegetables, such as tomatoes, cucumbers, green peppers, strawberries, and zucchini. She also cultivates oregano and mints.
