Marie Osmond's Dark Journey

12/22/1998 at 12:00 AM EST

A bout of postpartum depression caused Marie Osmond to abandon her husband and seven children last summer and to make plans never to return, the TV star admits. Osmond became depressed after the birth of her son Matthew on July 6, while she was on hiatus from her daytime variety show, "Donny & Marie." "I basically gave the baby to the babysitter, gave her the credit card, got in my car and just really felt that my kids would be better off if they did not have a mother," Marie says in the new issue of TV Guide. "I just left, never thinking I would come back, not really knowing where I was going or what I was doing." She drove up the California coast until her husband, Brian Blosil, reached her on her cell phone and convinced her to check into a motel. She was treated for depression. "I am still going through it," she says. "It is such an incredibly dark place."