TOAD Talk: Grace Lowe CdeP 2011

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our visitors.

I’m honored to be the TOAD, Teacher On Active Duty, and I want to kick off assembly this morning talking about one of my favorite artists, Dolly Parton, who died at the end of August.

We’ve been listening to a lot of Dolly in my house lately, and I keep coming back to one of her songs, “Wildflowers.”

Dolly grew up in the mountains of East Tennessee, one of twelve children in a tiny house. She loved where she came from. She spent her life writing about those mountains, giving back to them, and carrying them with her wherever she went.

But she also knew she had to stretch beyond them.

In “Wildflowers,” she imagines herself growing in a familiar field, surrounded by flowers that are perfectly content right where they are. But something in her tells her she needs somewhere else to go. So she leaves her home ground, takes her dreams with her, and takes to the road, not knowing exactly where she’ll end up.

And what a road it was.

She built an extraordinary career in an industry largely run by men, held on to ownership of her work when people with considerably more power wanted it, and met plenty of condescension along the way without ever surrendering her ambition or her sense of humor.

And then she used what she built.

She used her wealth to support education and healthcare in the community she came from. Her Imagination Library has given hundreds of millions of books to young children. And when researchers at Vanderbilt were working on a COVID vaccine, Dolly helped fund that work.

There’s something I admire deeply about that combination: ambition without apology, humor without cynicism, and success that remains tied to a sense of responsibility to other people.

I was surprised to learn that Dolly herself resisted the label “feminist” for much of her life, even as she advocated for women’s independence and equal pay. But Gloria Steinem, who died just eight days after Dolly, saw something in her. When Ms. magazine honored Dolly in 1987, Steinem wrote: “If feminism means each of us finding our unique power, and helping other women do the same, Dolly Parton certainly has done both.”

 

And of course, the story of feminism is much bigger than these two white women, built, challenged, and expanded across generations by women of different races, classes, identities, and experiences.

But I keep returning to Steinem’s idea: find your unique power, and help other people find theirs.

Dolly ventured out into the world, but she never confused growing with leaving her roots behind. I’ve been thinking about that distinction at the start of this school year.

Whether you came from across town, across the country, or across the world, you’ve entered a new chapter in this community. Some of you packed up your rooms and said goodbye to families, friends, and pets. Some of you still go home at the end of every day. But all of you are beginning something new, and the question of who you will become here is still wide open.

We spend a lot of time trying to figure out who we are. We’re asked what we’re good at, what we care about, and what kind of person we want to be. But one of the greatest gifts of a new school year is that you don’t have to have all those answers yet.

You don’t have to have found your group of friends on day one. You don’t have to know what you’ll excel at right away. You don’t have to predict which class, teammate, teacher, or idea will change your perspective this year.

You just get to find out.

And finding out doesn’t require becoming someone entirely different.

You can stay deeply connected to where you came from and still let yourself be changed by where you are.

Dolly carried her roots with her wherever she went, and eventually, she used what she gained in the wider world to nourish the place where she began.

So maybe “Wildflowers” is the ideal song for the start of the year. Not because we all need to uproot our lives, but because none of us knows today exactly where this year will take us, or who we’ll be when we reach the other side.

There’s freedom in that.

You don’t have to know the whole destination in order to begin.

As Dolly put it: “Wildflowers don’t care where they grow.”

Grace Lowe CdeP 2011 is the director theater at Thacher.