Well, I’m gonna give this a few tweaks and make it a proper personal essay for @soraya.press’s new site. Y’all are very kind. 💛

Show Post

Dolly loved and mothered all of us who were told by our towns we were too fallen for loving and mothering. The queer. The slutty. The barren. “I know, honey. Just let it out.” —— I’ll leave you this. Dolly (and Linda and Emmylou) loving and mothering the wayward son. youtu.be/wWEQDyrbphE?...

Show Post

I don’t know. Maybe Dolly did know. I’m always struck by how Dolly wrote so well and sang so beautifully about motherhood without ever becoming one in the traditional sense. “She was a mother to all of us” is so treacly you’d think it was a line in “Light of a Clear Blue Morning,” but it was true.

Show Post

I didn’t know then, and maybe Dolly didn’t either, how common stillbirth was. Babies didn’t die “as their way of telling” mom she needs to grow up, or repent, or stop indulging foolish fantasies, or anything in particular, really. Sometimes babies just die.

Show Post

Sometimes in those early crazy days afterward I would lay there in silence and wonder if I had jinxed my baby by brewing him in a body that savored the saddest songs. Who knew all the words to “Down from Dover” (both versions).

Show Post