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After we had all piled back in to our touring van and were driving off, Michael ran his hands through his own curly dark blond hair and started to cry. I thought he might be upset that Stephen had shaved his head, and so I told him, “It’s okay. You can keep your hair.” I had it wrong. As a small child, Michael had had a hard time pronouncing the letter “l,” so it was pretty tough to keep a straight face when he looked up at me and sobbed, “I want to be bawed and bweeding wike Stephen.” What could I say? He wanted to be a part of the trend. Fifteen minutes later, I had a bald five-year-old grinning ear to ear next to his older brother. Then I looked over at Jessica, who was about nine at the time and who always loved wearing her hair short. “Don’t even think about it,” I said.

Like many boys, Michael never fully appreciated his gorgeous curly hair, and after age fourteen, he always kept his hair less than a half inch long to make sure he didn’t have to deal with the curl. I remember when we first moved to Las Vegas, Michael was in the bathroom with his electric clippers, getting ready for his first day as a senior in high school, and ten-year-old Brandon decided that he wanted to be “bald and bleeding,” too. Mike granted his wish, much to my dismay, shaving off Brandon’s straight blond locks; within two minutes, he looked like he was heading to boot camp instead of fifth grade. After the initial daring wore off, being bald didn’t seem like such a great idea and Brandon took to wearing a hat every day until
his hair grew out a bit. Unfortunately, wearing a wool beanie in Las Vegas when it’s 105 degrees isn’t all that fun.

It was impossible for anyone in the family to stay upset or angry if Michael was around. No matter what the grievance was, Mike would have the whole room laughing in a matter of minutes. He would come up with hysterical voices, just off the cuff, and characters who had a series of facial expressions that no one else could pull off. One, in particular, was called simply “the Face” and involved scrunching up his face to resemble a pouting shar-pei dog, with about seventeen folds of skin from his hairline to his chin. Michael, with his sensitive heart, couldn’t stand to be around people who argued or hurt someone else’s feelings on purpose, so he would defuse any negative situation with laughter. He could keep anyone entertained, from an eight-month-old to his eighty-nine-year-old grandfather.

Even as a very little boy, Mike would take notice of and reach out to those who were marginalized because they were different, and figure out a way to make them smile. One afternoon when he was a preschooler, we made a quick stop at McDonald’s for a late lunch. Near the front door, sitting on the curb, was a man who was obviously homeless. Michael stopped in his tracks and wouldn’t go in the restaurant. He tugged on my arm impatiently. “Mommy, wait. Buy him a hangaburger,”
which is what he called hamburgers as a little boy. Before he would even order anything for himself, Michael had to take a full bag of food to the man outside of the door.

During his elementary school years, he would volunteer to help any child with a handicap get through their day. His favorite extracurricular activity was volunteering in the special-education classes and coming up with projects for the kids like making cars out of Twinkies and stringing beaded friendship bracelets. He would come home and tell me stories of how he loved being with them and how he would make them laugh and smile. Michael was always drawn to the pureness of spirit and honest reactions in these special children. As he got older, he would never pass any person who appeared to be homeless without opening his wallet and giving what he could. If he only had a twenty-dollar bill, then he would give the homeless person the twenty dollars.

Even though he was almost always shorter and smaller than most of the boys in his age group, if anyone else talked disrespectfully to or about his sisters, he would stand up for their integrity. If there was someone who fit the quote “It’s the quiet ones you’ve got to watch out for,” it was Michael, but only when it came to someone picking on his family or friends. I know he took quite a few bullies by surprise. He never initiated any confrontations, but he didn’t back down from a bully. They never messed with him or his sisters again.

When Mike was eleven, he wanted to play tackle football. It made me nervous because the other boys on the teams were about four inches taller and thirty pounds heavier than Michael.
Parents in the bleachers would often point him out with a remark or two about how little he was. But as with everything else, Mike threw his whole heart into playing. As it turned out, being short and quick, with a lot of upper body strength, worked in his favor. He was tough to catch up to, could duck under long, clumsy arms, and managed to become one of the best players on the team both as a running back and a defensive lineman. Not only could Mike make anyone laugh, he could have the last laugh, too.

I adopted Michael a few days after his birth. His birth mother was an unwed teenager whose pregnancy was unplanned, and tragically Mike’s teenage birth dad was killed in a car accident before the baby was born. To protect his birth mother’s privacy, I want only to relay one part of her story in connection with my son.

When Michael was thirteen years old, a woman rang our doorbell and identified herself as his birth mother. The facial features were so similar, it was obvious she was telling the truth. She brought photo albums of herself as a teenager and also of the boy who was Mike’s birth father, and she had pictures from when she was pregnant and one of the day Mike was born. She told us that she didn’t want to intrude on his life and wanted only to see him and know he was okay. We
were hesitant and wanted time to think it all through, but suddenly Michael and the older kids came up the stairs from the rec room, where they had been watching TV. I decided to introduce her to Michael, who could already tell who she was because of their similarities. They had the exact same chin and eyes. We all sat down and talked for over an hour, with her telling Michael the story of her pregnancy and his birth. Before she left, she gave us an address and phone number to reach her, if we wanted. Michael was intrigued and excited at meeting her, and I sensed that, as he hugged her good-bye, a part of his sensitive teenage heart must have been feeling that the missing piece of his history had been restored.

About a week later, Mike tentatively asked if he could send her flowers. It was Mother’s Day, and he was very hesitant to ask me, thinking it would hurt my feelings. I told him that I thought it was a nice idea. We picked out a gorgeous bouquet online and had them delivered to her at the address she had given us. This is where the “happy ending” that many adoptive children probably hope for ran into reality. The flowers were returned as undeliverable. When Mike tried to call, the number had been disconnected. She had already moved on to a new location, and there was no forwarding address. She didn’t stay in his life as he had hoped she would. Sometime later she sent him a card with an address and phone number, and he felt hopeful again. For the most part, though, she left his calls and letters unanswered, only responding every so often.

Years later, she told me that her intention was to let us have our life with our son and that she didn’t want to intrude. She
also admitted that she had suffered a lifelong struggle with depression and some addictions, but at that time, we were left to puzzle this out on our own. I wouldn’t want her to feel any accusations coming from me about her struggles. I didn’t hold a judgment about it when I found out, and I certainly don’t now. I always admire that, as a teenager, she was able to set her own needs aside and, realizing that she didn’t have the experience or resources to raise her child, give him the best opportunity to have a good life. I know she never intended to disappoint my son, ever. I think her hard life and struggle with severe depression made it almost impossible for her to know what the next day would hold. I have a deep empathy for her burden. She’s a beautiful spirit who has been down a very tough and similar path, having been mostly alone and also adopted as an infant.

When Michael passed away, I had a family member locate her to let her know. Then, at my invitation, she came to his memorial service. She was completely heartbroken, and she and I cried throughout the service and at the grave site. As I told her that day, she had given me the best gift ever, my son.

When Michael first met his birth mother, I hoped that the association would be positive for him, but it seemed to confuse him at an age when he needed the most stability. I have rethought my actions many, many times. Perhaps we should have used more caution in letting her come into the house that first day or made sure that Michael didn’t meet her until he was older and could understand her life story. I’ve always wanted to be straightforward with my children about their adoptions,
and I’ve never felt that it was my right to withhold any information that I had about their birth parents when they asked about them. I still try to look at it all through my children’s eyes; I know that I would be curious and want to know about my birth parents, too.

Michael started asking me about his birth mother when he was about seven years old. It was a time of big changes in our lives.

Shortly after his seventh birthday, I had to relocate the whole family to the Los Angeles area to tape the
Donny & Marie
talk show five days a week. After being the baby in the family for four and a half years, Mike also had to adjust to having two new siblings, Brandon and Brianna, join the family less than one year apart. My career hours shifted from working every evening in a Broadway show to being out of the house and on my way to the studio, usually from before the kids went to school until almost dinnertime. At the studio, I had a nursery/playroom set up next to my dressing room so I could have my babysitter bring the preschoolers, once they were awake and dressed, to be with me almost every day, but Michael had to be in school. The three older kids seemed to be at ages where they were more independent, which in a way was also not great for Mike. They had rigorous after-school schedules that included music lessons, karate, dance classes, sports, and other activities. Michael was often a passenger in this kid taxi service. As often as possible, the babysitter would drive Mike and the older kids to the studio to be with me, but being at a TV studio loses its charm for a kid pretty quickly, especially
when there are no other kids around, and being quiet in a TV studio is almost always the order of the moment.

I resigned myself to the fact that this is how I made my living. I was grateful that I had this opportunity and all the benefits it provided, like the chance to have my babies with me at work. Even though I was away from the older kids all day, I thought that they were all getting sufficient attention, since they had a full-time babysitter and their father with them at home.

I’ve read books and articles by quite a few child experts who seem to agree that ages seven and eight are years of major developmental changes for a child, most having to do with the shape and the biology of the brain. It’s the time when children gain much more reasoning power; they start to figure out how their actions produce cause and effect, the difference between right and wrong, and how they fit into the big picture of family and community. It’s the age when kids start to worry less about dangers that are imagined, like monsters and ghosts, and more about real issues, like not being popular with their peers because they are different. They also identify with the value system their parents hold and start to apply it to their own lives. Not only was Michael probably trying to figure out the male-role-model aspect—we also went through another big life-altering change: In 1998, at age thirty-nine, three months into the first season of the
Donny & Marie
talk show, I found myself unexpectedly pregnant.

Getting pregnant had always been a challenge for me, which is one of the reasons I knew, early on, that some of my
children would not come through me, but would still be my children. I always say, “Some of my children are adopted, but I can’t remember which ones.” People usually smile at that statement but it really is true for me. There is no differentiation in my feelings about any of my children. I felt total, unconditional love for each child the moment he or she was placed in my arms. Every one of my children will tell you that there is no difference between them. They are brothers and sisters, and being adopted or not has rarely been a topic of conversation among them. When people have asked them about it, they seem to all shrug it off as if the answer to the question were something as obvious as “Four of us have brown eyes, two have blue, and two have hazel.”

However, after I gave birth in 1999 I experienced the darkest personal time of my life with postpartum depression. I had gained an extra sixty-five pounds (yes, sixty-five!!), and my hormones were at a record low, which wasn’t discovered until months later. (There was little information available about postpartum depression in those days.) My baby boy was born two weeks into a six-week hiatus from the
Donny & Marie
talk show, so I had exactly four weeks before season two began to get back into shape, fit into my prepregnancy wardrobe, update my look, and be ready to step back onto the talk show set, fresh, happy, funny, and ready to go. For the publicity shots, they took my picture in a black top over black pants and then later digitally removed the excess pounds from my waist, arms, hips, and even my face.

I was in a downward spiral but my doctor labeled it the
“baby blues.” I told him that I had given birth before and remembered the baby blues. What I was feeling this time was three times more severe than baby blues. I was put on an antidepressant and a synthetic hormone that only exacerbated my problems. I felt I had no one to talk to about what I was going through because, in a self-loathing way, I thought I must have been overreacting. After all, having the baby blues was something millions of women went through for a week or two. Little did I know that I was among the 10 to 20 percent of women who suffer severe depression following childbirth—depression that often goes ignored. Before giving birth, I would have told you that I had it all together and could handle almost anything. I had my thirty-five-year career in show business, my six children, a thirteen-year marriage, a national charity, a successful line of porcelain dolls, various awards, hit songs, and a long résumé. I thought I was a pretty tough broad!! I had worked my whole life. I had experienced both the good and the bad, and I wasn’t naive about any of it. I truly believed that it would take a lot to knock me off course. Little did I know that it wouldn’t take much at all: only a seven-pound-eleven-ounce baby boy. I named him “Matthew,” which means “God’s gift.” And, truly, in the big picture, his birth brought a change and an understanding to my life that has been a gift. But at that time, so much was unknown about postpartum depression that I was left “a hot mess,” as my teenagers would have described it. I couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t get a grip on my emotions, and the shame I had about feeling miserable during what was supposed to be “the happiest time in a woman’s life”
made me want to hide away from the world. I wished I could “snap out of it,” not realizing that the odds of “snapping out of it” were extremely stacked against me. Recently, I spoke to a pregnancy group, and I asked how many of the women knew the risk factors of postpartum depression. No one raised her hand. There are eighteen known risk factors, and as I discovered after months of misery, I had seventeen of them. When I wrote about all of this in my book
Behind the Smile
, I was the first celebrity to go “public,” and I did it because I didn’t want other women to struggle for as long as I did without answers or, at the very least, some direction for finding help.