Dolly Parton is crediting her rise from a dirt-floor cabin in the Great Smoky Mountains to the Country Music Hall of Fame to two habits she’s practiced since childhood: praying hard and dreaming bigger.
“I dreamed big and I prayed big,” she wrote for Guideposts. “Then I worked like the dickens at the opportunities the Lord put before me.”
The essay, originally written for Guideposts’ June/July 2020 cover story, traces three dreams that have shaped Parton’s career: singing, giving back and building something lasting for families. She was born in a one-room cabin on the banks of the Little Pigeon River, the fourth of twelve children born to a sharecropper father who couldn’t read but was, in her words, “one of the smartest men I ever knew.” A Methodist minister who also practiced medicine, Dr. Robert F. Thomas, delivered her at home after her father rode a horse into town to fetch him.
Parton wrote her first song at 5 years old, for a corncob doll her mother had made her, and moved to Nashville at 18 to chase a career in music. The gamble paid off in a big way. She’s written more than 3,000 songs, landed in the Country Music Hall of Fame and picked up two Academy Award nominations for Best Original Song — for “9 to 5” from the movie NINE TO 5 and “Travelin’ Thru” from TRANSAMERICA.
Her second dream grew out of watching her father’s generation go without books.
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“There is nothing so empowering and liberating as a book given to a child who has none,” Parton wrote, describing the impulse behind her Imagination Library. The program has given away more than 130 million free books to children around the world over the past 25 years.
Her third dream became Dollywood, the East Tennessee theme park she says started as a joke about the Hollywood sign in the hills. One of her favorite spots on the property is the Robert F. Thomas Chapel, built with salvaged windows and doors from the same country church where the doctor who delivered her once preached.
“People can come in to write down their prayer requests,” she wrote. “They can have some quiet and make sure their prayers are as big as their dreams and most of all to make God a partner in them.”
Worth noting for readers encountering the essay fresh: it was written before Parton lost Carl Dean, her husband of nearly 60 years, who died in March 2025. Movieguide® has tracked Parton’s public faith closely over the years, from her Netflix documentary DOLLY PARTON: HERE I AM to recent remarks that her faith is “what keeps me strong.”
Parton has never hidden her faith behind a polished Nashville image. She built her empire crediting God at every turn, from barnyard performances on her family’s porch to a theme park chapel named for the doctor who brought her into the world.
For Christian families sorting through what Hollywood and Nashville alike often leave unsaid, Parton’s essay offers a plainer case: big dreams and quiet prayers were never opposites to begin with. “It’s been a while since Dr. Thomas brought me into this world,” she wrote, “but the dreams don’t stop and neither do the prayers.”
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