Dolly’s gone, and my heart is broken. Dolly’s nephew shared the sad news with us today in this video, expressing his deep love for her.

I have shed so many tears to Dolly’s songs over the years, but none more than today. Dolly saw me through births, joy, excruciating loss, and so many deaths. Love and loss – and always a reason to get up and try again.

I didn’t realize just how deeply she was woven into my life and into the culture I grew up in until the world suddenly had a Dolly-shaped hole in it. Sometimes grief reveals the true impact of someone’s life.

Dolly was and remains the consummate ambassador of love and humanity – a role model for all.

Dolly inspired so many and lifted us up. Beloved is the only word I can think of that fits the moment.

Through unifying music and lyrics that captured the most universal human emotions, she brought people together despite their differences. She never hesitated to explain that she measured everything she did with the yardstick of love. Love determined what she stood for, what she supported, and how she lived – even when it wasn’t popular.

Everyone could understand the emotions she wrote and sang about because she had lived them, too. Her immediately recognizable Appalachian voice sounded like home to so many of us. Dolly was no stranger to poverty and hardship, and those experiences motivated her to help so many others escape similarly desperate circumstances. Once she started, she never stopped, spending decades lifting people up.

It’s like Dolly was always telling me that I could. Like a favorite auntie who always believes in you, even when you don’t have enough sense or maybe courage to believe in yourself.

I grew up listening to Dolly. Country music wasn’t my favorite genre, but Dolly was always one of my favorite artists because I could relate to everything she wrote about. She was always one of “us,” no matter who you were. Who among us hasn’t been sad or joyful? Her lilting voice carried that entire range of emotions home, reaching the very depths of our souls.

My favorite song of Dolly’s is “Coat of Many Colors,” which you can hear here.

Why? Because it speaks to poverty and redemption. The song isn’t really about the coat at all, but about creating and showing love from scraps that life gave her mother and gives us. Sometimes, those scraps, along with love, are all we have to work with. Life isn’t about money or worldly goods. Beauty is wherever you find it and believe it lives. Like in people’s hearts.

May we all take the scraps life gives us and stitch them into coats or quilts of warmth and love, creating something beautiful that touches people’s souls and helps those in need. We are not doing anyone a favor. We are the ones blessed with the opportunity to uplift others.

Dolly exemplified love and resilience and refused to be diminished by what others thought she, or any woman, could, ought to, or shouldn’t do. She forged her own path with indomitable determination despite what others considered improbable, improper, or, more likely, impossible.

Dolly’s music is legendary and beautiful, but the philanthropic efforts enabled by her success are her living legacy. Dolly’s website provides additional information about her life, along with a link to donate to the Imagination Library in her honor. Dolly founded the Imagination Library 31 years ago, and the program has provided more than 332 million free books to millions of children. Today, more than 3 million books are mailed each month. You can help continue that legacy, as her family requested in lieu of flowers.

Dolly’s own father never learned to read or write. Now, millions of children receive books of their own and, along with them, the opportunity to learn to read and fulfill their dreams, thanks to her.

May we all do even a fraction of the good she did in this world.

Rest easy, Dolly. We will always love you.