Like so many of you, I have been sitting with the news of Dolly Parton’s passing this past week. She was 80 years old. For most of us she has simply always been there, in the background of our lives, singing about love and work and hard times. A true cultural icon, beloved by all.
That’s what struck me most. Beloved by all. People who normally can’t agree on anything were all saying the same thing about the same woman, at the same time, without arguing about it. And what they were all saying, in one way or another, was that she had lived a good life and made life good for many. But what does that really mean?
For Dolly Parton, it meant composing over 3000 songs. A theme park employing thousands of people in the county she grew up in. Three million books a month arriving in the mailboxes of every child from birth to 5. At no cost. Braille editions. Bilingual editions. A fund that reached every family who lost a home in the Gatlinburg fires. It is a staggering amount of good, more than enough. And I wonder if she felt that it was.
Many of us come into this field wanting to support others because we’ve experienced something with horses that offered insight into ourselves. We build programs with the hope of making an impact in our community. Often, we do this through sacrificing time, energy, and resources in other areas of our lives, driven by our mission and values of offering something for the greater good. The challenge comes when it becomes clear that the need is always greater than the resources, and then we ask whether we are doing enough, being enough, offering enough.
A student shared something she was struggling with the other day.
She wants to reach more people. She has been sketching out how to run more sessions, take on more groups, and fill more of her weekends. And every time she gets close to putting it out into the world, something in her pulls back. The farm is her home. It is where her horses live, and where she seeks refuge. Opening the gate wider means opening all of that, to more strangers, more often. She told me the thought of it made her chest tight, and that she felt guilty for feeling that way and wondered aloud whether it meant she was not committed enough.
Notice the value assumption underneath that. More people served means more good done, and more good done is what makes her work worth more. And her own reluctance is a flaw to be overcome rather than embodied knowing.
And here’s what I want to say to her, and anyone else struggling with this.
While I do believe a good life is one where we contribute more to the world than we take from it, what I’ve let go of over the years is the idea that the contribution has to reach a certain size before it counts. If one person’s life was better for having known you, that is a good enough life. If one horse’s life was better for having been in your care, that is a good enough life.
Your farm is not just a venue. It is a home, yours and your herd’s, and a great deal of what makes this work possible is that it’s a place where animals live at their own pace. What participants receive from you is the herd’s presence. And you’re included in that herd. So the question isn’t about how many more sessions you can fit into your schedule. It’s about how the herd shows up when people arrive, and you are part of that. That presence is the offering. It always was.
When we are unsure we are enough, we are pulled to give more. We add the extra session. We say yes to the group we have no capacity for. We stay later, work harder, buy the equipment we cannot afford, in the hope that this will finally feel like we’re offering our best.
Which is exactly why tending to yourself is imperative in our work. If what you offer is the fullness of your authentic being, then depleting yourself is spending the one resource nothing else can replace. Keep saying yes from an empty well and your presence will diminish day by day. We cannot offer a steadiness we do not have. Our participants will feel the difference between presence and performance, even if they can’t name it. And they’re watching to see whether we are gentle with ourselves, or whether that is only advice we give other people.
None of this is an argument for offering less. Depletion is easy; you simply keep saying yes until there is nothing left, and you get to call it commitment. Intentionality is harder. It means choosing what is actually yours to give, giving it with your whole attention, and then pausing. It means knowing the difference between the work you are called to and the work you took on to prove something to others.
The same goes for the horses. Their home is the one being shared too, and they need to be consulted about the program load. A horse who has had enough of humans in a session needs to be allowed to disengage. To graze. To roam. To spend time in the company of other horses, just being horses. The freedom to walk away from something without being reprimanded. When we allow our horses the freedom, choice, and agency to be themselves, they set the pace for us. They remind us to slow down, to rest, to digest.
Caring for ourselves and caring for our herd is the same practice.
Dolly’s impact on the world was enormous when we look at the totality of her generosity. But no child ever received three million books. Each of them received one envelope, once a month, and as far as they were concerned that was it. One envelope, one child, one porch, starting in one county in East Tennessee in 1995, back when the whole thing was a woman remembering the girl she had been. The scale was never the point. It was always about changing the life of one child at a time.
The same is true of a practitioner and participant sharing space in the full presence of the herd. Volume adds more of those moments, but it doesn’t increase their worth.
Everyone is saying “Be like Dolly”. I don’t think that means building something enormous. I think it means knowing your worth and that your presence is enough. Dolly’s presence in the world is what we’re missing. She spoke about getting more attention than people who were doing more than she was, and when asked how she chose where to give, she said she simply gave from her heart. She lived courageously, softly, imperfectly, unapologetically, with sparkles and all. And by showing up authentically, and trusting who she was, she gave us permission to be ourselves. As we are in each moment. However that may be.
May we give from fullness rather than depletion. May we rest before we are empty. May we let ourselves be seen in our imperfections and limitations. And may we offer our horses the same freedom we are still learning to give ourselves.
Rest well, Dolly. Here’s to a good enough life.