Dolly Parton’s Not-So-Secret Source of Strength Through Vulnerability

“Dolly?” Dolly Parton looked up, about 10 feet away, just before the interview picked back up from a break on a Nashville-area soundstage.

I was hired to work with her on Star of the Show: My Life on Stage , the third in a trilogy of coffee-table books for Random House subsidiary Ten Speed Press.

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We were just a few questions away from a tough moment in her career, and as uncomfortable as the topic was, I didn’t feel like I would be doing my job if I ignored it.

As she acknowledged in her last public statement on Aug.

21, Parton endured female health issues in the early 1980s, and they raged in the summer of 1982.

A doctor warned her against taking the stage at the Indiana State Fair, but she performed anyway, trying to fit the show in before a rainstorm arrived.

Her band knew she’d been struggling, but the musicians were unaware of the duress under which she was carrying out the “show must go on” mantra that particular night.

She held up long enough to do her job, but in the hours after the show, she was flown to New York City, where she had surgery and cancelled her public commitments for several months.

Parton was as adept as anyone at turning heartbreak into heroism, and I wanted her to have the opportunity to do that with this moment.

“Dolly, it’s your book, so it’s up to you.” I said that — or something close to that — as I let her know what was coming.

“I think your resilience is one of the things your fans admire about you, and I suspect your story about this could inspire them.” Her response was quick: “Nah, that’s a bunch of female problems.

Nobody wants to hear about that.” She had, it seemed, made her choice.

But about 20 seconds later, she looked up again: “Listen, you ask me whatever you want to ask, and I’ll give you an answer.” So I asked, and she went way deeper into it than I had anticipated.