Today I got news that put my heart into my throat.
We lost Dolly Parton.
What an institution. What an amazing woman.
I remember earlier in my life, I didn’t necessarily feel that way about her. Growing up in a very ultra-conservative background, I was always taught that while she might have a lot of talent and certainly be able to sing, all of her add-ons—the wigs, the body adjustments, for lack of a better term, the way she dressed, the way she looked, the whole persona she had cultivated—were just too much.
It was over the top.
No woman should be going out and about like that.
But as time went on and I started developing my own thoughts about life, I realized there was a lot more to Dolly Parton than wigs and over-the-top dressing.
She seemed to be doing exactly what she loved to do, and she was extremely good at it.
And so, as I got older—and didn’t mind having some over-the-top ways myself—I started identifying with her a whole lot more.
That would seem absolutely incredible to the young girl I once was.
But time has a way of changing a lot of things.
Sometimes including our attitudes.
Recently, I watched more than one interview with Dolly, and in one of them she was asked what she wanted to be known as, or what she considered herself to be. She used a phrase I had never heard before.
She considered herself a song teller.
She loved stories and loved sharing stories, but she was a songwriter, so she put her stories into songs.
A song teller.
What a clever way to describe a woman who gave country music some of its most incredible songs.
I had forgotten the story about I Will Always Love You and Elvis Presley. Elvis wanted to record it, but Dolly wouldn’t agree to give up part of her publishing rights in order for him to do it.
Elvis Presley.
Think about that.
For a young songwriter, having Elvis Presley want your song would have been enough to make a lot of people sign just about anything put in front of them.
Not Dolly.
She seemed to be a wicked-smart businesswoman, too.
And the more I learned about her over the years, the more I became proud of the woman she was.
Like me, she decided never to have children. Maybe not for the same reasons, but we had that in common. And now that I’ve realized I’ve been a storyteller my whole life and have started writing songs—some of them because there are stories I want to tell—I understand her on an entirely different level.
I am definitely no Dolly Parton. I’m not laying claim to fame like that.
But I understand her in a way I never would have imagined back when I would occasionally see her on television in her skin-tight clothes and enormous wigs and wonder what in the world that woman was doing.
I also remember being fascinated when movies were made about her life and learning more about where she came from.
From her earliest days growing up in poverty in the hills of Tennessee, Dolly wanted something different for herself. She talked about seeing the women in town whose exaggerated hair, makeup and clothing caught her attention. That glamorous, over-the-top look fascinated her.
And despite growing up singing in church, as so many of us did, she somehow had this extraordinary belief that she was going to get out into the world and make it big.
That blew me away when I heard her talk about it in an interview several years ago.
Can you imagine never doubting yourself?
Never wondering whether you really could become successful?
She just seemed flat-out determined.
She knew where she wanted to go, and she went.
I had also never heard much about her husband, Carl Dean. When I finally became curious enough about Dolly to do some research, I found their relationship fascinating.
From everything I read, he seemed to be a great partner for her precisely because he went and did his own thing while she went and did hers.
But one of the things I found most interesting about their relationship was that he seemed to let Dolly be Dolly.
He didn’t appear to spend his life trying to change her.
Actually, I think changing Dolly Parton probably would have been a pretty impossible task.
But he didn’t even seem to try.
Of course, none of us knows what conversations actually happened between the two of them behind closed doors. But they were married for nearly 60 years, and when Carl died in 2025, Dolly seemed devastated by the loss.
Maybe part of what made their marriage work was simply that they allowed one another to be who they were.
I don’t know what makes a successful marriage. There are probably about as many answers to that question as there are successful marriages.
But I have wondered about Dolly after losing Carl. She had spoken openly about how deeply his death affected her and about needing time to rebuild herself spiritually, emotionally and physically.
And today, when I heard she was gone too, I couldn’t help wondering how much losing the person who had been in her corner for almost 60 years changed things for her.
There was something else that immediately came to mind when I heard the news today.
Just a few months ago, I read a book written by the woman who says she is the actual Jolene from Dolly’s famous song.
That story caught my attention for another reason, too. My middle name is Juleen, which is awfully close to Jolene, and through the years people have occasionally decided Dolly’s famous song would be a good one to sing to me when they hear my name.
It is a beautiful song. And certainly a famous one.
In the book, Jolene tells the story of how her father took her and her older sister to a Dolly Parton concert when they were little girls. It was an outdoor concert, and afterward the girls made their way toward the stage.
But Jolene was much smaller than her sister.
The crowd was large, the two girls became separated, and suddenly this little girl couldn’t see where she was supposed to go because she was surrounded by adults.
She got scared.
But Dolly could see from the stage what had happened.
She saw that the sisters had become separated, and she had the crowd move aside so the girls could get through. Jolene ended up going onto the stage, where Dolly spoke with her and asked her name.
When the little girl told her it was Jolene, Dolly told her what a pretty name it was and that maybe someday she would write a song about her.
And that was that.
Except, of course, someday Dolly Parton did write a song called Jolene.
What I found especially poignant in the book was that over the years, both Jolene and her sister tried various ways to get in touch with Dolly.
They wanted to tell her that this was the little girl she had met all those years before.
But they could never seem to make it through all the gatekeepers surrounding someone as famous as Dolly Parton.
They kept hoping.
And at the end of the book, Jolene still had hope that someday it might happen.
Today, those hopes are gone.
And for some reason, that makes me incredibly sad.
I never met Dolly Parton.
I listened to her music plenty of times, but I didn’t know her.
Yet I feel the loss.
Maybe part of that is because I had come to admire not only what she accomplished, but what she seemed determined to leave behind.
Legacy is a topic that matters deeply to me, and Dolly seemed to think about hers while she was still here to build it.
She created the Imagination Library to put books into the hands of children. She gave generously throughout her life. She continued creating. She continued writing. She continued dreaming about what she could do next.
Even at 80, she apparently wasn’t finished.
She had been working on a Broadway musical based on her life, another milestone she was excited about. I hope that work still finds its way onto a stage.
Because that is what legacy does.
It keeps going.
And somewhere along the way, my view of Dolly Parton completely changed.
Instead of seeing her as that over-the-top woman who was just a little too much, I came to admire her tremendously.
I admire that from her earliest years, she seemed to know exactly what she wanted.
And then she went after it.
Not halfway.
Not timidly.
She went after it 250 percent.
She seemed determined not to let anything—or anybody—stand in her way.
So no, I’m no Dolly Parton.
That’s for sure.
But there is something about her life that I very much want to emulate.
I want to purposely build my legacy, too.
I want the articles I write, the music I create, the stories I tell and everything I am about in this life to become something that can live on after me and help somebody else.
I can assure you, I won’t have Dolly Parton’s millions to leave behind.
But strangely enough, her money isn’t really what I think about today when I think about Dolly Parton.
I think about a woman who seemed to genuinely care about people.
I think about a woman who knew who she was.
I think about a woman who didn’t seem particularly interested in making herself smaller so other people would be more comfortable with her.
I think about a woman who told stories through songs.
And I think about a woman who just kept going.
Maybe that is one of the greatest legacies any of us can leave.
To live so fully as ourselves that when we are gone, someone else looks at the life we lived and becomes a little braver about living their own.
I think Dolly might be happy to know that is part of the legacy she left behind.
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“To live so fully as ourselves that when we are gone, someone else looks at the life we lived and becomes a little braver about living their own.” I just love this!!! Wonderful article. RIP Dolly🙏🏻🙏🏻