I needed some time before I could collect my thoughts on Dolly Parton and I’m glad I didn’t rush. As a child who was essentially raised partially by television, I can’t tell you how many movies and TV shows are in my DNA. I’ve watched 9 to 5 and Steel Magnolias more times than I can count and I never knew why I was drawn to watching Dolly Parton move in the world but I always was. She seemed like she was just happy to be wherever she was and never took those moments for granted.

Later I would learn she’s a Capricorn, like me, and her stories of being born into socioeconomic poverty but being wealthy beyond our imagination in love, talent, and belief in herself would make so much sense to me later on. Whether you hear stories about how she memorized the entire 9 to 5 script because that’s what she thought she was supposed to do or how she made the difficult decision to not let Elvis - THE ELVIS PRESLEY sing one of her songs when she was virtually unknown because he wanted too much control over what she wrote or you hear about the famous 24 hours where she wrote many of her biggest hits - you know that you have someone special.

What you don’t often hear about are the little moments where she also shifted lives. And this is where the example of being an accomplice or ally really comes into play - she did it without fanfare.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how we advocate for each other and how sometimes people feel the need to broadcast their advocacy in ways that tell everyone about their actions and why that people do that. What’s this need to attach yourself to someone’s moment or success and see yourself in that journey? In my ideal world, we are like Dolly where we don’t hear about how she wrote checks for people in her hometown who lost their homes or how Coretta Scott King paid the hospital bill for Julia Roberts’ birth since her parents welcomed the King children to their dance studio when others would not. How many times a day do colleagues, coworkers or even leaders quietly do something for others and the doing is the most important thing rather than telling people you did it or alerting people that you were doing this thing way before anyone else?

It’s probably hard in this age of technology where the act can’t be enough because we attach the act to relevancy. But with Dolly passing, it’s given me time to think about that attachment. How we didn’t get a press release about her helping to fund the Moderna vaccination. How we didn’t get an official social media post about her support for Black Lives Matter or the LGBTQIA+ community. How all we heard about is why she wanted kids to have books (her father couldn’t read and she had this beautiful way of thinking of her parents as children who didn’t get what they should have) and she just wanted to make sure the books got to the kids. How we never heard about her potential to be a billionaire yet instead she gave away money for others to have since she knew what it was like to not have. How there are a million stories we will never hear about her act of generosity, principles, and kindness and that’s ok because we already knew her character by the way she showed up.

It should surprise no one that her passing affected so many universally. Yet it surprises me how many people who practice acts of exclusion missed the beautiful details of her life for the sake of their own story. One person on social media posted that we shouldn’t be buying her box desserts because of the chemicals. After she died. I responded “The reason she’s Dolly and you’re you is because this isn’t something she would ever do. We can afford to ask ourselves What Would Dolly Do.”

So for me when I revisit her two movies that mean the most to me - 9 to 5 and Steel Magnolias - I can see her character in both. She typically took on parts that were relevant to who she was and what she cared about.

9 to 5 is a movie about employee engagement. I see that now as an adult whereas when I was a kid, it was more about me wondering if that’s the experience my mom had at work sans the Skinny and Sweet rat poison storyline. I wrote previously about how 9 to 5 today shows us that we still haven’t moved that far from workplace engagement since the movie came out. It literally gave us the blueprint on what we can do to make employees’ lives easier- job sharing, better healthcare, a daycare (I’d love a doggy daycare but that’s because I don’t have human children), a collective of people making decisions that increase engagement at work and productivity. Three women who were overlooked came together to solve workplace problems that nobody in leadership cared about. We sing the song but forget the message even still today.

Steel Magnolias is a movie I can recite the entire dialogue to. In fact, if you are a close friend of mine, you have actually heard me say MANY lines from the movie including but not limited to “my colors are Blush and Bashful - your colors are PINK and PINK!” or “Shelby, your hair…it’s so short” or “"I'm not crazy, M'Lynn, I've just been in a very bad mood for 40 years!" OR "I have a strict policy that nobody cries alone in my presence." The sight of Truvy Jones in that collective of women - kind and patient - being the rock for all of them when she was at home not getting the support she always needed, makes me emotional. The scenes between Dolly and the GREAT Sam Shepard always make me proud because both of them, without many words, are ACTING OUT OF THEIR FACES on what the ups and downs of marriage are and how it can just be what you need - not anyone else - in the end. There is no ideal, there is only what works.

All of these things are important ways of being that I have been reflecting on as I embark on my new job which I love, and this new era of taking into consideration what works for me and deciding what doesn’t when the decision needs to be made (friends, social media, my FOMO, healing childhood traumas). I have lots of people and things to thank for that and Dolly is included. I truly cried like I had lost a family member because the amount of time I have spent with her voice, her story, her one-liners, her movies…it really felt like we were kin. I like to think she’d like that.

I hope this musing allows many people to rethink how they show up since we have such a good blueprint in Dolly and so many others. We don’t have to be like the Lord of the Flies and raise ourselves when so many people are showing us their light.

Have you heard that Safe Space is now an app AND also houses some of the best newsletters around??

Here are some of my favs:
Workfluencer - Duh. Rhona’s dropping gems on being a creator in this space.

Fine I’ll Say It - It’s Madison Butler. Saying the thing that most people won’t but it needs to be said.

got a sec? - This is not a drill! dani herrera has FINALLY entered the newsletter game and it’s so long overdue. Equitable practices in workplaces from a trust practitioner!

People over Platforms - I don’t know about you but I’m tired of the generic AI warnings without any data or information behind their statements. If there is ONE person I’m listening to, it’s Aubrey Blanche aka the MathPath.

The AUDACITY - Jessica Winder is a voice I make sure to pay attention to. Clear, transparent, solutions oriented, and she absolutely knows what she’s talking about.

One my dreams is coming true. I’m joining THE Hebba Youssef and the WorkWeek Team at the next SafeSpace Summit in CA!

Fellow Theatre Kid and HR Strategist Kim Rohrer invited me on her podcast, So Drama, where we talk about how work and theatre intersect and how theatre actually prepared us for work.

Highlights include:
🎭 Why playwriting builds a thicker skin than almost any other professional training
💡 The power of the reframe: "I am not for everyone AND everyone is not for me."
🪞Show, don't tell: what bad theater and bad leadership have in common
🤝 The "one slot" problem: how gatekeeping in theater mirrors gatekeeping in HR
📚 Why impact outlives title, and what that means for how you measure your own success

Check out here and let me know what you think!