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I’ve always had a fascination with Marie Osmond. Yes, I realize she’s not as cool as Lady Gaga or as sleek and hip as Beyonce’, but Marie gets it.

Real life.  
 
She’s a survivor.  Divorce. Fainting on Dancing with the Stars.  And most recently, there is the tragic death of her son to a drug-overdose. Yet, each time I see her smiling, hands on hips and 50 pounds lighter on those Jenny Craig commercials, I see a survivor who knows how to simply put one foot in front of the other to keep going.  Like the time she handed her house keys and seven children over to her nanny, telling her to call her husband before she spoke these parting words: “I’m outta here.”
 
Marie took off, driving up the Pacific Coast Highway and checked in to a motel where she probably heard the sound of silence for the first time in years.
 
I’ve been thinking a lot about Marie lately.  I only have one child but there are days when I feel like if I hear the word, “Mama!” one more time, I might hand the keys over to the nanny and take off as well.  Except, I don’t have a nanny. And I only have one child, my daughter, Chloe.
 
On a particularly tough day, when Chloe was going through yet another one of her quirky developmental phases and my husband, Mike was working too much and my mother was calling a little too often, I closed my eyes and thought of Marie.
 
What was it like to feel such despair that your only solution was to get up and go?
 
In the years since, I have often wondered if Marie ever relived that moment when she got in her car and heard the engine turn over?  Did she remember glancing in the rear view mirror for even a split second? Did Marie wonder if the nanny remembered the way her daughter liked to be tucked in at night? Or the promise she made to her son to help him break in a new baseball mitt before the season started?
 
Or did she just gun it out of the driveway and think only of the wide-open road and that quiet motel room where she could get an uninterrupted night’s sleep? I hoped she had room service and On-demand movies.
I like the fantasy—especially the On-demand movie part—but I realize I could never trust someone else with the details of my family’s life that might turn into sweeter memories later.  Like the way I kiss Chloe’s neck and promise to love her “to infinity and beyond” each night.
 
Granted, Marie’s run up the Pacific Coast Highway turned into a media circus.  But through it, she brought greater awareness about post partum depression and the role alternative medicines and acupuncture played in her recovery. Marie gave hope to millions of women who suffer from PPD and to those, like me, who just want to sit for a moment with a hot cup of tea next to an open window where we can feel the breeze without anyone needing something from us.
 
The moral of the story is that Marie came back to her husband, her kids and a new book deal. The “paper roses” Marie described her chart-topping song defined womanhood as the artful navigation between what we wish for and what we sometimes have to wait for, like good results from a medical test, a good night’s sleep, or our child saying, “Thank you,” and actually meaning it.
 
So, unlike Marie, I will stay put and work on savoring those moments, knowing I will be home, waiting, and watching with gratitude as they unfold. 

Former CNN anchor, Carol Lin is the mother of one daughter and the co-founder of TulaHealth.  She is a regular ShareWIK.com contributor.  Visit her on the web at CarolLinReporting.com.

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