In a World Full of Jolenes, Be a Dolly

In a World Full of Jolenes, Be a Dolly ❤️

Dolly Parton died today.

And I’m really bloody sad about it.

I’ve never met Dolly.

She didn’t know me.

I wasn’t her friend or her family.

Yet when I heard the news, I felt genuine loss. I feel genuine loss. I’m sad.

Because some people become woven into our lives without ever actually being in them.

And Dolly was part of mine.

Her music has been part of the playlist of my life. Different songs belong to different memories, different people, different places and different versions of me.

Even my Mazda Bongo camper van is named after her.

Dolly Daydream. ❤️

And there’s a sign standing in my counselling room that says:

“In a world full of Jolenes, be a Dolly.”

On my bed I have Dolly cushions. In my journal I have Dolly stickers.

So yes. I bloody loved Dolly.

And today I’m grieving someone I never knew.

More than the music

Of course I loved her music.

Songs that make me smile.

Songs I sing far too loudly.

Songs that transport me straight back to another time.

That’s one of the incredible things about music.

The person singing might have absolutely no idea you exist, yet their voice can sit alongside you during some of the most intimate moments of your life.

Yet with Dolly, I loved what she seemed to represent too.

The humour.

The kindness.

The glamour.

The hair.

The beauty.

The ridiculous amount of sparkle.

The ability to seemingly never take herself too seriously while taking the things that mattered incredibly seriously.

She was feminine, funny, ambitious, successful, clever and kind. None of those things had to cancel another one out.

There was something wonderfully unapologetic about her.

This is me.

And perhaps that’s one of the reasons I’ve always been drawn to her.

I’ve spent a lot of my own life learning how to stop trying to fit into what I thought everybody else wanted me to be.

Dolly certainly never seemed interested in disappearing quietly into beige.

Neither am I.

And then there were the books

One of the things I particularly loved about Dolly was her passion for children’s literacy.

Her Imagination Library grew from something she started in Tennessee into an international programme gifting books to young children.

Books.

What a bloody wonderful legacy.

Stories.

Imagination.

Curiosity.

Characters to identify with.

Different worlds to disappear into.

Opportunities for children to discover that reading and stories belong to them too.

As someone who absolutely loves books, there’s something about that which has always really touched me.

Fame can be used for lots of things.

Dolly used hers to put books into children’s hands.

That tells me something about what she chose to put back into the world.

“Yet you didn’t actually know her”

No.

I didn’t.

And that’s something I think is worth talking about.

Because sometimes when a famous person dies, people almost feel they have to qualify their sadness.

“I know I didn’t actually know them…”

As though we’re being silly for grieving.

We’re not.

Grief doesn’t require a reciprocal relationship.

We can absolutely grieve somebody we’ve never met.

Sometimes we’re grieving the person.

Sometimes what they represented.

Sometimes their death connects us with our own losses.

Sometimes it confronts us with ageing and mortality.

And sometimes we’re grieving all of the memories attached to their work.

Because a song stops being only a song.

It becomes your mum.

Your childhood.

A road trip.

A relationship.

A breakup.

A holiday.

Getting sober.

Dancing in the kitchen.

A funeral.

A camper van.

A version of yourself who doesn’t exist anymore.

A whole bloody chapter of your life can live inside three minutes of music.

The relationship might have been one-sided. The meaning wasn’t.

There’s a little bit of Dolly everywhere in my life

My counselling-room sign makes me smile every time I see it:

“In a world full of Jolenes, be a Dolly.”

Obviously, poor Jolene has been taking an absolute arse kick battering for decades. 😂

However to me, that sign has always meant something bigger.

Be kind.

Be generous.

Be yourself.

Have humour.

Don’t make yourself smaller to make other people comfortable.

Give something back.

Stand up for what matters.

Wear the bloody sparkles.

Let other people be themselves too.

Leave people feeling a little better for having encountered you.

And then there’s Dolly Daydream.

My camper van.

Road trips, holidays, adventures and memories, all happening in something carrying her name.

It probably sounds like a tiny, insignificant thing.

Today it doesn’t feel insignificant at all.

Because that’s how people become part of our stories.

In hundreds of little ways.

We don’t need to justify our grief

This is something I talk about in my work and something I’m reminding myself of today.

We don’t need to rank grief.

We don’t have to prove we were close enough to somebody to earn the right to feel sad.

There isn’t a grief application form.

If somebody mattered to you, they mattered.

If their music accompanied your life, that’s real.

If their words helped you through something, that’s real.

If they represented something important to you, that’s real.

If hearing they’ve died makes you cry, let the bloody tears come.

Grief is grief.

And grief is incredibly personal.

People die. What they gave us doesn’t.

That’s the bit I’ve been thinking about.

Tomorrow, that sign will still be hanging in my counselling room. The cushion i’m looking at sat here on my bed.

“In a world full of Jolenes, be a Dolly.”

Dolly Daydream will still be sitting there waiting for her next adventure.

I’ll still put those songs on.

I’ll still sing them badly.

They’ll still transport me to people, places and memories.

The books she helped put into children’s hands don’t suddenly disappear.

Neither does the kindness she inspired.

Or the laughter.

Or the memories.

Or the bloody sparkle.

And maybe that’s part of grief too.

People go. The bits of them we loved get carried forward.

I never met Dolly Parton.

She never knew there was a leopard-print-loving psychotherapist Counsellor in Kent driving around in a Mazda Bongo called Dolly Daydream. 😂

However, she has been part of the soundtrack, humour and colour of my life for years.

So yes.

I’m grieving somebody I didn’t know.

And I’m absolutely okay with that.

Tonight i’m playing her music loudly.

I’ll see that sign in my counselling room.

And Dolly Daydream will carry on having adventures.

Thank you for the music, the books, the kindness, the laughter and all that bloody sparkle, Dolly. ❤️

In a world full of Jolenes, be a Dolly.

The world feels a little less sparkly without you in it.

take gentle care

Lou x