I feel blessed - I am a woman who has been able to work in the entertainment business for five decades. I don't want to age, but I would never take back a year for the wisdom I've gained in that time.
— Marie Osmond
I was 15 years old, taken out into a parking lot on the set of 'Donny & Marie,' and at the time I was 5-foot-5 and 103 pounds - like, nothing. I was told I was an embarrassment to my family and the show would be canceled if I didn't lose 10 pounds.
I was so honored when Diane Sawyer named me 'Person of the Week,' and like I told her, 'Diane, I love my daughter.' I cried when I found out when she told me she was gay when she was 17 because of the judgment.
I have always lived the way I wanted regardless of whether or not it was popular.
I don't claim to know everything. I claim to be a seeker of knowledge.
I don't tell my children, 'If you're not good, you're going to hell.' I tell my children that God will be there for them when they struggle. That's the God I believe in.
You can do everything you can to try to stop bad things from happening to you, but eventually things will happen, so the best prevention is a positive attitude.
Being of service to others is what brings true happiness.
I never had a sister growing up. Donny was the closest thing.
The good Lord made us all out of iron. Then he turns up the heat to forge some of us into steel.
You are in the back of your head somewhere and you want to close your eyes and go away.
This is a serious, serious condition that is also called postpartum psychosis. And that's where, literally, you get so bad that you end up either hurting the baby or killing yourself.
The other thing is that doctors test only the most common estrogen level. There are three kinds of estrogen in a woman but they don't test the other two because they are so rare; mine was the third kind of estrogen.
I lost boundaries as a child that I didn't even realize it and it wasn't talked about back then. You know, it was something you just buried and dealt with, and moved forward. What could you do about it?
I did a book signing when we were in New York the day before yesterday. A lady came through and she was just weeping, and said, 'I wish this would have been brought out sooner, my sister is in prison for suffocating her child.'
I am happy. I have a wonderful marriage. I was in a not-great second marriage for 20 years, then I fell in love with Steve, my first husband, again, and we remarried. I wore the dress from our first wedding in 1982 - it was tight, but I could get into it.
My mother never asked me to do anything she wouldn't do herself. She always taught by example.
Never be too busy to listen to your instinctive feelings when something feels wrong.
I'll always be best known as Marie Osmond, but in my checking account and at home, I will gladly be Marie Craig.
Women are so strong and knowledgeable. You know, instead of competing with each other, I would love to complete each other. Take away that wall of competition and say, 'Hey, let's just all get together and help each other be brilliant.'
That's what it is to be a grandma. All fun and no stress.
Divorce is challenging. When your kids go through things, it's tough. But it's no different for any other woman. And I have great compassion for single moms. It's lousy out there for them. I had the ability to work. I have always been the provider anyway, but there are a lot of women who can't support themselves.
I learned a great lesson from my mother on her deathbed. She counseled me on the importance of taking care of myself so I wouldn't end up in an unhealthy body like she did.
I wish my parents could have raised every man out there.
You know, you don't work 30 something years in this business without knowing how to push yourself. So, I just kept pushing myself and pushing myself. The other thing that happens is when your hormones get out of whack your emotions come up.
What basically happens is your hormones get out of whack. Because of the stress in your life your body says, 'I need more hormones.' So, your hormones are trying to produce and produce and produce, and it's even more stressful and it is this wicked cycle.
This is a physical thing that is fixable. I know, I'm a survivor. Believe me, there was no way I thought I could survive. There are answers out there that need to be found.
So, babies are taken from their mothers because they get temporarily insane and it's not the mother's fault. This is the thing: they shouldn't feel ashamed. They didn't cause this. It is not something they did to themselves.
I found for me that my safe place was work. I could control my environment. I became very fastidious and detailed, and wanted things a certain way.
If you're going to be able to look back on something and laugh about it, you might as well laugh about it now.
When I look in the mirror, I see my late mother: I have her nose, her dark eyes - I call them chocolate eyes - I have her colouring, and my hair is greying the same way, although I use colour and she didn't.
I don't know so much about my boys, but my girls, they all work with me. They know how to work. My daughters know it's not done till it's done, even if it's three or four in the morning. I don't want them to grow up with entitlement.
I don't play politics; I don't do that. I think there's too many celebrities out there claiming what they believe. I think it's our job to get people out to study the issues and to know what they believe and what they want to vote for.
I think a couple should complete one another, not compete with one another.
When I did 'Dancing With the Stars,' I got literally thousands of emails from people saying, 'We relate to you. I've been divorced. I'm raising kids on my own.' Or, 'You've had money. You've lost money.'
I have great faith in God. Without faith, I don't know how I would have been able to get through what I've been through.
You need to be able to manage stress because hard times will come, and a positive outlook is what gets you through.
I mind my body by eating whole, healthy foods. I learned from Nutrisystem to eat consistently all day; otherwise, your body hoards fat. Of course, I also mind my body when it occasionally whispers, 'Marie, you need some chocolate.'
When you have a baby, love is automatic, when you get married, love is earned.
You just need to be honest with how you're feeling. But, a lot of women are afraid of it because they think, 'Oh, they are going to take my baby away. They're gonna call me incompetent. I'm going to lose my job. I've got to be tough, it's a man's world.'
We know well and we know chronically ill, but there is a whole bunch of gray in between where I think we can heal people before they become chronically sick. I believe our thoughts make us sick.
There are some great questions to ask your doctor. If he says 'no,' then you find yourself a different doctor. There really has to be a change in how we medically look at women at this time. I mean, this is not just baby gloom.
Little things in my past that I really thought were over and done with were still elements of the puzzle that weren't pieced together, and so she helped me do that.
I didn't know my mother had it. I think a lot of women don't know their mothers had it; that's the sad thing about depression. You know, you don't function anymore. You shut down. You feel like you are in a void.
