What Dolly Parton Taught Us About Living on Purpose

Dolly Parton once said, “Find out who you are and do it on purpose.” But she didn’t just say it—she built an entire life around it.

In this episode, I share the clairsentient experience she had the day before Dolly’s passing and reflect on what Dolly taught us about authenticity, purpose, generosity and creating success that makes more room for other people.

In this episode:

• Why finding yourself means refusing to cut yourself into more acceptable pieces
• How Dolly built an empire in rhinestones without diminishing her intelligence, ambition or spirituality
• Why purpose is not what you say matters to you—it’s what your life repeatedly demonstrates that you care about
• How Dolly used her success to create jobs, fund education and medical research, and support the community that raised her
• Why someone else does not have to fail for you to succeed
• Why people don’t have to understand what you’re building while you’re building it
• How to use your gifts, influence, time and success to leave the world better than you found it

This episode asks us to consider:

Because I was here—who had a better experience?

Find out who you are. Do it on purpose. Wear the rhinestones, build the business, help your people—and trust that the right people will pick up what you put into the world.

Follow me on Instagram: @alannacrawford_

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to the Summit of Event, where science meets soul and you don't have to pick one or the other. Hi, I'm your host, Elena Crocker, osteopathic manual practitioner and breaking out teacher. On the pod, we're talking about body wisdom, energy, intuition, and becoming an expert on your own feeling. Whether you're looking to find yourself again, create a new version, or see, just here for the results, you're in the right place. I'm here to demystify spiritual curiosities while adding a layer of humanness to the healthcare experience. No gatekeeping, no pedestals. This podcast is for the woman who is ready to take her power back. Let's do it. Hello everyone, happy Wednesday! I had a completely different episode planned for today. It was actually gonna be about the gallbladder. Um, the gallbladder more so as a theme than necessarily your actual gallbladder, a referral pain pattern, and how we look at that through the three layers, which, if that jazzes you up, guys, we're gonna talk about that next week. But honestly, a really crazy thing happened to me the other morning surrounding Dolly Parton's passing that I I could not bring myself to record the gallbladder episode I had planned. There's a quote by Dolly Parton that I have always loved and it's always resonated and now it's circulating. So you y'all have probably y'all am I Dolly, you guys have already seen it. It says, find out who you are and do it on purpose. The more I thought about it, the more I realized this might be one of the clearest descriptions of what I've been trying to build with the Summit Collective. Like, thank you, Dolly, just sum that up perfectly for me. And if I'm gonna practice what I preach, I need to share the crazy thing that happened because I am figuring out who I am and I'm doing it with purpose. So here it goes. Monday morning, I wake up very, very sad for the world. When I woke up, I had the thought and I had felt like Dolly Parton had died. I felt that very viscerally, and then the thought clicked in like Dolly Parton has died. And I was worried about how hard a hit it would be to humanity of her passing, because this is just not the time on this earth that we can lose her beacon of light. Then I'm I'm walking up to go get my daughter out of bed because she's calling for me, and I realized, like, Alana, Dolly Parton is still alive. And it wasn't a dream, and I didn't imagine it. I just woke up with that visceral feeling, and that's what we call clairsentient. It's um claire feeling. So once I realized that, and it was it was just a feeling that I clocked Dolly Parton was going to die soon. Sure enough, yesterday, a day later, she had passed. And now we're feeling that heavy hit, that hit that I was so worried about. We are mourning the loss of an icon. Honestly, the closest living human we had to Jesus. Yes, I said what I said. It feels so unfair in a time where billionaire asshats keep just trying to hold us down no matter how hard we're fighting. So why her? Why not the clinically insane orange man? Why not everybody on the Ebbs team list? Why not all of the evil ones? Why her? In an interview in November 2025, the interview asked Dolly about her thoughts on turning 30 or 30. Oh my gosh, Olena, on turning 80. And she said, look at all I've done in 80 years, and I feel like I'm just getting started. And this is a quote I see circulating in a very mournful way right now. A lot of woes around her life was cut too short, and she still had so much to do. And yes, I do agree that we needed her for longer. It did get cut short. But for everyone posting this and mourning her loss, what are we doing? How are we contributing? Like, let's let the woman rest, you know. She did a lot. We can't keep putting changing the world on her beautiful rhinestone shoulders. We need to carry her load. So I want to start here because I want to take that take this as an invitation, if you will. Maybe she didn't get to complete everything she wanted to, but just because she's gone, it doesn't mean it has to stop. We as a collective can keep doing the work. So get comfy friends. We are going to talk about what Dolly taught us about knowing who we are, living out loud, and using whatever gifts we have to leave this world a little bit better than when we found it. Step one, find out who you are. Dolly was unapologetically herself. The hair, the makeup, the boobs, the outfit, the rhinestones, all of it. I was watching a clip of her on Jimmy Fallon, I think it must have been like a year or two ago, and she had her like insanely long acrylic nails that are like very square tip, old school square tip. She never toned down the look that some people probably considered ridiculous or over the top. Like she wasn't interested in making herself more digestible so that people would take her seriously, even at pretty much almost the end of her life. And I fucking love that about her. It hits me so deep in my heart space, you know? Like that woman just was who she was. But beneath the hair and the boobs was an absolutely brilliant woman. Actually, my mom has a story that captures this perfectly. So back in 2010, my mom attended the Rotary International Convention in Montreal. And Dolly was the keynote speaker there. Rotary has long made literacy a priority, and they had partnered with Dolly's Imagination Library to promote earlyhood childhood reading. So at this point, her program, Dolly's program, had delivered more than 23 million books to preschoolers, and 140 rotary clubs were participating in that effort. So that was the connection between Dolly being the keynote and rotary. My mom was an active member of Rotary at the time. So Rotary is all about pins. Like you get a pin for everything. Like you do something, you get a pin. So my mom, when she came home, she was so amazed by Dolly, and she was telling me about her keynote and all this stuff, and she said, someone went to put a pin, like a rotary pin on Dolly. They were presenting her with this pin, and she was like, careful, honey, you pop a hole and the whole thing deflates. She's standing on stage as the keynote speaker at an international convention making a joke about her own fake boobs. And then, in the same breath, moving into the extraordinary work that she has done for childhood literacy. She was so funny without ever allowing herself to become the joke. Underneath the rhinestones was a woman who understood something incredibly important. Literacy changes the entire trajectory of a person's life. And that's something I also believe and feel very passionate about. She created the Imagination Library because her father couldn't read or write. And she describes him as the smartest man she's ever known, but believed his inability to read had prevented him from fulfilling all of his dreams that he had. So she took something painful from her own family story and turned it into an opportunity for millions of children. She could make an entire room laugh about her boobs and then command the same room's attention while talking about education, poverty, and generational change. That woman did not have to sacrifice one ounce of herself to validate another. And I think that's a lesson we should all take out of her playbook. Dolly wrote more than 3,000 songs throughout her career. She had 25 number one country singles and 47 top 10 country albums. 47. A thing she's really known for is when Elvis Presley wanted to record I Will Always Love You. His manager had demanded half of the publishing rights, and Dolly turned that down. She really wanted Elvis to sing her song, and she said she cried all night after turning down the opportunity, but she understood the value of what she had created. So she kept ownership of that work. And years later, Whitney Houston's version became one of the biggest selling singles of all time. And that when they talk about um her becoming, I mean, not just that song, but it's a large part of it. Like her, she could be a billionaire, but she keeps reinvesting her money. It's it's instances like this, the business decisions she made that created that long-term wealth. And I know I wish like, I wish deep down I could bottle up that deep knowing, that knowing of your own value and worth, and put it into every single woman on this planet. As she moved further down her trajectory of fame and fortune, she never once suppressed any part of herself, her image, her story, her humor, nothing. She let herself just be all of it. And I think there's a lesson in there for so many women. How often do we separate ourselves into acceptable pieces? We might tone down our appearance so we'll be taken seriously. We might soften our ambition so we don't intimidate anybody. For me personally, like sometimes I hide my spirituality because I think I want to sound credible, and by talking about that, it discredits me in some way. We underplay our intelligence because we don't want others to feel uncomfortable. And Dolly said, absolutely fucking not. She essentially built an entire business empire in rhinestones and acrylic nails. Like, I am obsessed. Dollywood in um its affiliated East Tennessee businesses now attract more than 4 million visitors annually. And it creates jobs and opportunities for thousands of people in the community where she grew up. That is what it looks like to find out who you are and to do it on purpose. Not finding the one version of yourself that everybody else thinks acceptable, right? She never fit into a mold. She found the fullest version of herself and refused to cut it into smaller pieces. Last night, the last thing I wrote in my journal before bed was, we should all be more like Dolly. Heart. I can't wait to share my wealth and make a world, make the world a better place. And reflecting on that first bit, we should all be more like Dolly. Viscerally writing that and saying it, it made me feel relief. Like I am so fucking tired of trying to please people or fit into some sort of persona that people feel is appropriate for the type of work that I do. How much of our exhaustion comes from trying to be someone we were taught would be more acceptable? Like, really think about that and then ask, what would Dolly do? And just give yourself the permission to drop anything that isn't authentically you. I think about how often I've worried that science and spirituality pieces of me don't belong together. That if I was, if I want practitioners to take me seriously, I should turn down the spiritual side. Or if I'm going to speak about intuition, I need to prove to prove that I'm still evidence-based. But Dolly never seemed interested in amputating one part of herself to make another part easier for people to understand. And I'm not gonna do that either. Which leads us to step two. Do it on purpose. Figuring out who you are is the first thing. We gotta do that. But actually building a life that reflects the person is something else entirely. When we talk about finding our purpose, I think people imagine there's one like enormous calling that they're supposed to uncover. The universe is just gonna drop this perfect box of a purpose, perfectly formed mission statement into your lap, and suddenly your entire life is gonna make sense. And that's not the way purpose works at all. Purpose is getting really fucking clear about what matters to you and then making choices that reflect it over and over and over. Questions to ask yourself, like what do I value? What do I want my work to stand for? How do I want people to feel after spending time with me? I think that one is so important. What am I willing to protect? Guys, seriously, right now on this earth, this is so important. So I'm gonna say it again. What am I willing to protect? And where can I contribute? Again, important. And again, arguably the most important, what am I building beyond my own success? Dolly didn't just figure out who she was, create an iconic image, make a shitload of money, and be like, well, this is it. She used who she was to do something. She invested in the community that raised her. Like Dollywood is so much more than a name on a theme park. It created thousands of jobs and brought millions of visitors into the region where she came from. When wildfires actually devastated the community in 2026, she created the My People Fund, which provided direct financial support to the families who had lost their homes. She, you guys have probably heard about this. She donated a million dollars to COVID research at Vanderbilt, some of which supported the early work behind the Moderna vaccine. And she also donated another million towards pediatric infectious disease research. So she built businesses, she created jobs, she funded research, she ported education, like the woman just helped people. Dolly became wildly successful, but her success didn't end with just Dolly. She let that move through her. Her purpose was not some branded copy that she posted everywhere. She talked about it, sure, but that that wasn't the point. You could see it where her money went, where her attention went, who benefited because she became successful, which begs the question. If we stripped away everything we say we care about and looked only at where people put our time, our energy, our money, and our influence, what would our lives say our purpose is? Like, let that sink in for a second. Purpose is not what you say matters to you. There's a whole lot of talk that goes on on social media. There's a whole lot of reshares. There's a whole lot of judgment. But purpose is what your life repeatedly demonstrates that you care about. And yes, most of us do not have Dolly Parton money. I mean, I totally wish we did. I know I did, but we do all have something we can circulate. Yes, it could be money, but it could be knowledge, it could be your platform or your business. For most of us, mere mortals, it is simply our time. And that one is still hugely important. I would say, especially as you get older, time, your time is the highest form of currency. And as much as I think we all would like, our purpose does not require us to make a worldwide foundation. It doesn't even have to come in the form of a financial contribution. Purpose is being able to ask this question. Because I was here, who had a better experience? Because that to me, that's doing it on purpose. Step three, my wonderful friends. Someone else doesn't have to fail for you to succeed. And this brings us to another thing, Dolly seemed to understand. Someone else's success does not take anything away from yours. It floors me that in today's day and age, we still think success is a finite resource. I just did a four and a half minute rant on my Instagram about this. I can't even talk about it because I'm still fired up. But if you want to see that, go check it out. It's on my Instagram page. But it's very apparent that across many industries, people still feel that if somebody gets ahead, we like we must, or the other side must be falling behind, that those two things are interconnected. And they're not. And Dolly never seemed to move like that. She collaborated constantly across generations, genres, and completely different worlds. She didn't protect her relevance by shutting younger artists out. She stayed relevant because she kept those doors open, staying curious and recognizing what other people brought to the table. And she didn't only uplift people when there was something in it for her. After her and Eminem were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2022, Dolly sent him a personal letter. You should go look at his Instagram. He just posted it. But they had never met. In this letter, she told him she didn't know much about rap music, but after watching his performance, she knew that he was the very best at what he did. And she encouraged him to keep going and reminded him that he touched people in ways he probably didn't even realize. She had absolutely nothing to gain from writing that letter. But she did it because she's Dolly fucking Parton and that's what she does. She saw someone doing something extraordinarily well and she went out of her way to tell him. And yesterday, after she died, Eminem had shared that letter. She shares a lot of nice things, but she said she definitely didn't have to take the time to do it. And that's exactly the point. She didn't have to, but she did. Dolly did not seem to believe that acknowledging someone else's brilliance diminished her own. She could be one of the greatest songwriters and performers of all time and still be completely in awe of somebody who's worked like nothing like hers, exactly like Eminem. She understood that another person does not have to fail for you to succeed. And you don't have to fail for them to succeed either. There is so much more room than just one person at the top or one person in the room. She didn't become smaller by making other people feel significant. If anything, her generosity is a part of what made her so enormous and larger than life. And that is the kind of success I want and that I strive for is that that massive generosity, not like a massive stardom, although the woman had both. I think such a huge measurement of success is like who feels more seen, more capable, or more welcome because I succeeded. And I like before I came on to record this, I quickly saw like a tribute Taylor Swift had done and a couple other women, I think Mary Morris was one of them, just saying, like, thank you for the doors that Dolly had opened to allow these women to be authentically themselves. And again, like I think it goes directly to that question. Lastly, part four, you don't need to be understood by everyone. Dolly mastered being underestimated. People could see the hair, the rhinestones, and jokes, and and miss the songwriter and the strategist and the businesswoman and philanthropist underneath it, but she didn't need to convince everyone that she was intelligent before she proceeded with her life and her dreams and moving forward. I think a lot of us delay becoming who we are because we're waiting to be correctly understood. Like we want people to understand why we're changing, what we're building, and how it all perfectly fits together in the long run. And something I'm really leaning into right now is that people don't have to understand what I'm building when I'm building it. My job right now is to create it, to put it into the world and trust that the right people will pick it up. And everybody else is free to just walk away from it. And here's some questions I want you to think about before I bring this episode home. What would you pursue if you stop trying to make it understandable to everyone? What part of yourself have you made smaller to appear credible? And what are you waiting for permission to become someone you already know you are? Summit, like the Summit Collective has always been about coming home to yourself. Like that is the root of everything. Healing the physical body, understanding the nervous system, listening to your energy, and learning to trust what you know, what you already know, what you know deep down, so that you can remove enough of the noise to recognize who you already are and then live from that place on purpose. Dolly Parton showed us that knowing who you are isn't only about self-expression, it's about responsibility. Once you recognize your gifts, your voice, what matters to you, what will you do with them? Will your purpose end with you? Or will the fact that you were here make somebody else's life a little bit better? Find out who you are, do it on purpose. Wear the rhinestones, build the business, write the songs, give away the books, help your people, whatever that looks like. You do not have to choose between being successful and being good. Period. I think the greatest purpose in becoming fully yourself and then using who you are to leave the world a better place than you found it. Dolly, rest peacefully. We will carry on your work and we will use our purpose to better this place. Everyone, it's been a slice. I will see you next Wednesday. Bye bye.