It would be hard to imagine a world without Dolly Parton. But in the early '80s, she contemplated taking her own life.
On the first episode of the podcast Dolly Parton's America, she says, “I got overweight and I was going through the change of life. I was having a lot (of) female problems, I’d been going through a whole lot of family things, just the stress, the heartache, There was just several things going on at that time. I was just broken down.”
She prayed for guidance and even started writing a note when her dog, Popeye, jumped up on her bed. She took it as a sign that she needed to go on. “God is dog spelled backwards, and I always thought that might have been the very thing.”
The first episode of the nine-part series is available now. (Today)