- Melissa Gilbert shares how she reimagines the phrase “aging gracefully” to work for her.
- Her phrase to live by involves practicing gratitude for a happy life.
- “Aging is a gift,” she said.
We know Melissa Gilbert to be an outspoken advocate of aging. After all, she’s made it the mission of Modern Prairie, her lifestyle brand, to empower and connect older women. So it’s no surprise that the Little House on the Prairie star reinvented a popular phrase about aging that, despite its good intentions, may be doing more harm than good. Instead of “aging gracefully,” Gilbert’s phrase to live by is: “I’m aging gratefully,” she told People.
If you think about it (and as some, like Christie Brinkley, have pointed out), the term “aging gracefully,” in a backward way, upholds unrealistic standards for youthful appearances and energy. When someone says a woman is aging gracefully, it’s like telling her she’s “still beautiful” or that she “looks good for her age.” It doesn’t allow them to exist in a way that’s not at least attempting to resemble her 20-something self.
So Gilbert is taking looks out of the equation. “The idea that we’re trying to teach people to be afraid of aging is a mistake. Aging is a gift,” she said. “I like to say I’m aging gratefully.”
The sentiment goes hand-in-hand with Gilbert’s rejection of “anti-aging” marketing in skincare and cosmetics. “There’s no such thing [as anti-aging]! It’s derogatory and demeaning,” she said. Gilbert developed that perspective after her own negative experiences with cosmetic procedures like Botox and plastic surgery in her late 40s.
“It’s exhausting keeping up that kind of façade,” she said. So she stopped it all—the injections, the hair dye, the red carpets—and moved away from Hollywood to upstate New York, where she lives a slow and intentional cabin-dwelling life. Which, as her go-to phrase suggests, prioritizes gratitude—for her family, her role as a grandmother to eight “heavenly” grandchildren, for her husband, Timothy Busfield, and for their “silly little chores” around their 14-acre farm, she told People.
As arbitrary as it may seem, practicing gratitude—or “a positive state of mind evoked by focusing on and appreciating the good in one’s life,” Erin Wiley, M.A., L.P.C.C., a licensed clinical psychotherapist previously told Prevention—really is as powerful as Gilbert suggests. There’s a reason it’s Oprah Winfrey’s secret to a happy life, too. Research shows it to be an effective practice for well-being, especially with age. And Gilbert, clearly, is an example of that.
Her other wellness tips, which she previously shared with Prevention, are just as grounded and practical: She eats a “vegetable-forward,” “flexitarian” diet, is mindful of movement, and prioritizes preventative care like regular skin checks and routine colonoscopies. As it turns out, when you dismiss the pressure to look a certain way, it doesn’t take much to live a fulfilled life.
“I wouldn’t want to be younger,” she told People. “I wouldn’t want to have to learn these lessons again. I like where I am. Happy in my skin, happy in my life.”
Kayla Blanton is a freelance writer-editor who covers health, nutrition, and lifestyle topics for various publications including Prevention, Everyday Health, SELF, People, and more. She’s always open to conversations about fueling up with flavorful dishes, busting beauty standards, and finding new, gentle ways to care for our bodies. She earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Ohio University with specializations in women, gender, and sexuality studies and public health, and is a born-and-raised midwesterner living in Cincinnati, Ohio with her husband and two spoiled kitties.
