Melissa Gilbert Spent Her 50th Birthday Crying at a Spiritual Center

Melissa Gilbert recently turned 59. She had a quiet day with her family, which she said was “heaven.” As the former Little House on the Prairie star enjoys her last year in her 50s, let’s look back at how she began the decade: having a moving experience at a spiritual center. 

Melissa Gilbert wanted to do something ‘quiet and reflective’ for her 50th birthday

Gilbert couldn’t have ignored turning 50 if she’d wanted to. Publications and sites ran headlines like “Half-Pint Reaches Half a Century” for months leading up to May 8. But she didn’t want to ignore it. She also didn’t want to celebrate with a big blowout, as she’d done for milestone birthdays in the past. 

“For fifty, I decided that I’d had enough crazy to last a lifetime,” she wrote in her 2022 memoir, Back to the Prairie. “I thought something quiet and reflective was most appropriate for this milestone.”

So her husband, Timothy Busfield, took her to the Meher Spiritual Center in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. It’s not somewhere Gilbert would have thought to go on her own, but she was happy for Busfield’s suggestion.  

“We got there and I stared at my husband with deep admiration,” she wrote. “How did he know? Because, ladies and gentlemen, that’s Timothy Busfield.”

The Meher Spiritual Center 

The Meher Spiritual Center is a celebration of Meher Baba, an Indian spiritual master. The grounds feature lakes, beaches, and forestry across five hundred acres. When Gilbert and Busfield stayed there, they stayed in a small cabin for $35 a night where they unplugged and disconnected from the outside world.  

“There were no phones, TVs, newspapers, or even classes to take,” she wrote. “Just a quiet that was blanketed with Baba’s message of love.”

Gilbert and Busfield spent their days resting and lost in thought “on a deeply spiritual level.”

Melissa Gilbert’s experience in Meher Baba’s bedroom  

There were several places on the grounds that were preserved exactly as they were when Meher Baba roamed the center in the 1960s. One of those places was Baba’s bedroom. Visitors are permitted to visit the bedroom and rest their heads on his bed, a spiritual ritual that allows the person to connect with Baba’s spirit. Gilbert was skeptical but tried to enter the space open-mindedly. 

“In addition to all my natural skepticism, I wasn’t interested in acquiring any more or any new religion in my life, but I had been enjoying my time in this outdoor temple and relishing the rejuvenating effects of being immersed in nature for days, and so I gamely followed Tim into this bedroom,” she wrote. 

Her reaction to the experience surprised her. 

“Then, when it was my turn to go in, I laid my forehead on the bed and my whole face started leaking tears, like I was binge-crying uncontrollable tears full of joy,” she wrote. “It was the strangest, weirdest thing, and I loved it. I sailed out of there on a carpet of bliss.”

Gilbert felt the experience was a great way to start off her 50s. We’ll have to wait and see what Half-Pint does to ring in her 60s.