Dolly

This one hurts.

My girls LOVE Dolly Parton.

Not just know who she is. Not just sing a few of her songs.

They idolize that woman.

And honestly? I’ve always been pretty damn happy about that.

Because if my daughters are going to look up to somebody, Dolly is a pretty good woman to pick.

Yes, she could sing. Yes, she wrote songs that will outlive all of us. Yes, she had the hair and the boobs and the rhinestones and that unmistakable little laugh.

But Dolly was so much more than all of that.

That woman was SMART.

She was a businesswoman. An entrepreneur. A creator. She understood ownership. She understood branding before half the world even knew what “building a brand” meant.

And she did it without turning herself into somebody else.

She didn't tone herself down so people would take her seriously.

She turned herself UP.

More hair.

More rhinestones.

More Dolly.

And then walked into rooms full of people who probably underestimated her and handled her business.

God, I love that.

But what gets me even more is what she did once she had the money, the influence and the ability to actually change things.

She loved kids.

She cared about literacy.

She took the fact that her own daddy couldn't read and turned it into the Imagination Library, putting books into the hands of millions and millions of children.

That's the stuff I want my girls paying attention to.

You can come from nowhere.

You can be a little rough around the edges.

You can be country as hell.

You can be feminine and loud and funny and different.

You can like pretty things and still have a damn good business brain.

You can make money AND do good with it.

You can build something huge without forgetting the people standing where you started.

Dolly somehow had this incredible ability to find the rhinestones in the rough.

Maybe because she was one herself.

A little girl from the Smoky Mountains who didn't have much, who dreamed something enormous, worked her ass off, stayed unmistakably herself and then spent a lifetime reaching back for other people.

That's a woman I'm okay with my daughters idolizing.

So this one feels different in our house.

Because Dolly wasn't just one of my icons.

She was theirs, too.

And there aren't many people who get to belong to grandmas, moms AND little girls all at the same time.

Dolly did.

I hope my girls remember that part of her.

Not just Jolene.

Not just 9 to 5.

Not just the sparkly outfits and big blonde hair.

I hope they remember the woman underneath all those rhinestones who was sharp as a tack, generous as hell, completely herself and never seemed to forget where she came from.

And maybe that's the best Dolly lesson of all:

You don't have to polish away the rough parts of yourself to become something beautiful.

Sometimes you just find the good in them...

and add some damn rhinestones. 💗✨

We'll miss you, Dolly.

And thank you for being one hell of a woman for my girls to look up to.