08/26/2026
When we moved to Nashville, I had just lost my last grandparent. My grandmother was a little like Dolly in her own way. She was born and raised on our family farm in the South that has now been in our family for five generations. She was deeply creative, an artist at heart, feminine, strong and incredibly rooted in where she came from.
So much of what Dolly sang about always felt familiar to me. Her words sounded like home because, in many ways, they echoed the women who raised me.
Both of my grandmothers along with my mama are at the root of so much of what I’ve built. They believed in my dreams before they were businesses or plans or anything that made sense on paper. They encouraged the creativity, the independence and the belief that you could make something from very little if you were willing to work for it.
I took this photo at the height of COVID, inside a room at a Nashville wedding venue. This room was devoted to Dolly. At the time, I was quite literally living the words written on the wall:
“We cannot direct the wind, but we can adjust the sails.”
So many of us were. Everything stopped, and those of us who had built businesses had to figure out how to keep moving when the path in front of us suddenly disappeared.
Dolly never seemed to believe she had to trade her femininity for strength or success. She could be soft, sentimental, glamorous and completely feminine while also being a brilliant businesswoman who knew the value of what she created. She also knew when something simply wasn’t for sale.
Dolly wasn’t only a legend in music. Somehow, she felt personal to so many people. She jumped off the pages, through the lyrics and beyond the stage and reminded us of home, of where we came from, and of the people who believed in us first.
There will never be another Dolly. 💖