What Would Dolly Do? A life of IMPACT

It’s been a while since I’ve written a blog.

Life has been busy. Work has been full, my calendar has stayed packed, and—as life tends to do—the days have somehow slipped into weeks before I realized how much time had passed since I sat down simply to write.

Then I got a phone call.

I was sitting at my desk working when a friend called me.

“Amanda, are you sitting down?”

“Yes,” I replied.

“Dolly Parton passed away.”

We hung up, and for a moment I just sat there.

Her words echoed in my head.

Then my phone started ringing again.

Calls. Text messages. Messages from friends, coworkers, and people who knew how much I loved and admired Dolly. People were checking on me almost as if I were an immediate member of her family.

Of course, I wasn’t.

I never even had the privilege of meeting her.

But I understood why they called.

Because the people who know me know that my admiration for Dolly Parton has never really been about the music, the movies, the rhinestones, the fame, or even her extraordinary success.

I admired the way she lived her life.

When we talk about making an impact, I’m not sure there could be a better example.

Dolly used what she had—her success, her influence, her money, her voice, and her platform—to make life better for other people.

She encouraged young people to finish school.

She put books into the hands of children who might otherwise never have had books of their own.

She helped families rebuild after disaster.

She supported hospitals, medical research, education, communities, and people she would never personally meet.

And she did it while somehow never seeming to forget where she came from.

That is the part of Dolly Parton I have always wanted to emulate.

Not the fame.

The purpose.

Today, I have the privilege of serving as Executive Director of IMPACT Learning Center, and perhaps one of the things that means the most to me is that IMPACT is the home of Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library here in Jackson County, Alabama.

There is something incredibly special about that to me now.

Every child we help enroll, every book that arrives in a mailbox, every parent who sits down and reads that book with a child—it feels like one small piece of a legacy continuing.

And somehow, I get to have a tiny part in that.

My office is filled with Dolly quotes.

“If you don’t like the road you’re walking, start paving another.”

“Find out who you are and do it on purpose.”

But one of my favorites has always been:

“I’m not going to limit myself just because people won’t accept the fact that I can do something else.”

Maybe that one resonates with me so deeply because, in many ways, it also describes what I believe about the work we do at IMPACT Learning Center.

People should not be limited by where they started.

They should not be limited by the job they have today, the education they didn’t finish years ago, the technology they don’t yet understand, the opportunities they were never given, or the version of themselves other people have decided they should remain.

Education can change that.

Training can change that.

Encouragement can change that.

Sometimes, simply having someone look at you and say, You can do this. There is more available to you, can change that.

That is what IMPACT means to me.

Helping people discover another road.

Helping them gain the skills to start paving it.

Helping people recognize abilities in themselves that maybe they had stopped believing were there.

And giving them an opportunity to become something more—not because there was anything wrong with who they were before, but because human beings deserve the chance to grow.

I think Dolly understood that.

Her Imagination Library is built around an incredibly simple idea: put a book in the hands of a child.

But think about what that book represents.

Imagination.

Possibility.

Curiosity.

Education.

A child beginning to understand that the world is much bigger than the place where he or she happened to be born.

A child beginning to dream.

And sometimes dreams are where every other change begins.

As I go through the rest of my own life, I hope there are pieces of Dolly’s example visible in the way I live it.

I hope I treat people kindly.

I hope I make people feel seen.

I hope I encourage someone who has stopped believing in herself.

I hope I remind somebody that one bad chapter does not mean the story is finished.

I hope I help people recognize the potential they have.

And, whenever I can, I hope I can play some small role in helping them reach it.

I know that when my own life is finished, my impact on this world will never resemble the enormous legacy of Dolly Parton.

Most of ours won’t.

But maybe that isn’t the point.

Maybe making an impact was never supposed to mean changing the entire world.

Maybe sometimes it means changing someone’s world.

Helping one child love reading.

Helping one adult gain a new skill.

Helping one person find a job.

Opening one door.

Offering one opportunity.

Showing one person kindness on the day they desperately needed it.

Believing in somebody before they knew how to believe in themselves.

Those things matter, too.

Someday, when my own story is finished, I don’t need anyone to say that I was famous, important, successful, or extraordinary.

There are really only a few things I hope they can say.

She really cared about her community.

She helped people when she could.

She believed people were capable of more.

And maybe most importantly:

She sure did show a lot of love.

If that is the IMPACT I leave behind, I think I’ll be pretty proud of the life I lived.

And somewhere along the way, when I'm unsure what to do next, I imagine I'll still hear that little question I've asked myself so many times:

What would Dolly do?

Then I’ll try to go do a little bit of it.