I’m almost out of free space and will have to upgrade this week.
Secondly, I have been sick enough to have upcoming surgery and to take a full week off to rest. Yet, my heart won’t let me quit you, beloveds. You mean too much to me.
I am aware that I rarely get visitors anymore. No matter. Still, I rise. I’ll be here for whosoeverwill.
Meaning, I got all or none of you. I’ll keep your seat at the table waiting for you.
In the meantime, enjoy “Still in Love….
loving you still,
Cassandra
PSA: Don’t be ashamed to admit when you are wrong. Get some act ✅️right!
Fix what YOU broke/ break. I’m fixing mine! Nah, fam. We do NOT choose to be a clown.🤡🪠🩼🩹⛓️🦯🪣🧻🥽🗑⛑️🧺💃🏿👏
I need to start there. Because if I’m going to introduce myself—really introduce myself—I don’t want to begin with a website.
I don’t want to begin with something that happened to me. I don’t want to begin with a list of things I have survived, things I have accomplished, or things somebody else might use to explain who I am.
I was me looooooong before I was a blog.
I was a little girl who loved words. I remember sitting in doctors’ offices reading Reader’s Digest. And no, I wasn’t just some bored little kid grabbing whatever happened to be sitting on the table. I was drawn to it.
I loved the motivational things. The encouraging things. The words that could make somebody think differently, laugh unexpectedly, or feel a little better than they did before they read them.
I loved Quotable Quotes. I loved Life in These United States. I loved Laughter, the Best Medicine.
Long before I had a blog, I was collecting words. Long before I had readers, I was reading.
Long before I knew exactly what I would do with my voice, I was listening for voices that made life a little lighter, a little wiser, a little more hopeful.
And somewhere along the way, I started writing too. I’ve written all my life.
Writing wasn’t invented for me by a website. It wasn’t something I suddenly discovered because life became difficult and I needed somewhere to put my thoughts.
Words were already mine. Encouragement was already mine.
For a long time, I have tried to READ something, WRITE something, and LISTEN to something positive every day.
Feed your mind something worth carrying. Put something worthwhile back into the world. Listen for something that reminds you there is still goodness here.
That rhythm did not suddenly become meaningful because my circumstances changed.
It was already mine.
And then there was another dream.
I wanted to be a motivational speaker.
There was just one teeny-tiny problem: I was terrified of public speaking. 🤣 Apparently my heart had ambitions my nerves had not approved.
But I wanted the microphone anyway. 🎤
I wanted words to do out loud what I already knew they could do on a page. I wanted to encourage people. I wanted to speak into somebody’s life and leave something there that might help them keep going.
Eventually, I did speak. I had to give a speech to graduate. A teacher helped teach me about the written word and the spoken word. Later, I joined a speaking group. I volunteered helping abused children. I gave presentations.
I was scared.
And I enjoyed it anyway.
Somewhere in all those years—the reading, the writing, the listening, the speaking, the serving—there was one ridiculously simple thing underneath everything.
I wanted to love the world. 🌎
That’s it.
I wanted somebody who felt alone to feel less alone. I wanted somebody who was ready to stop to take one more step. I wanted somebody who had forgotten their worth to encounter a few words that might remind them:
Your life matters.
Eventually, there was a blog.
Why Can’t I Be Loud?!
But please understand the order.
The blog didn’t make the woman.
The woman made the blog.
The blog simply gave something that was already living inside me another place to go. Another microphone. Another page. Another doorway. Another way to reach toward somebody I may never meet and say:
Come here. Sit with me awhile.
And if I’m really introducing myself, I can’t skip one particular word.
Ugly.
There. I said it.
I was called ugly.
I’m not going to pretty that part up now. Words matter, especially when they find you young. Ugly informed my world. It affected beauty. Belonging. Being seen. Being wanted. Being included. Being looked at—and being looked past.
But there is something I refuse to give that word:
My love.
Ugly informed my world.
Ugly did NOT inform my love.
Cruelty does not get to come back years later and collect credit for the woman I became. I will not hand it that trophy.
I did not learn to love the world because somebody taught me what cruelty felt like. The people who hurt me do not get authorship credit for my heart.
That heart was mine.
And God loved me as I was. Not some someday version of me. Not the version somebody else might find prettier, quieter, easier, more acceptable, or more convenient.
Me.
And somewhere along this life, I learned something else too:
I love me.
This face is mine. This laughter is mine. This faith is mine. These questions are mine. These words are mine. This heart is mine.
This voice is mine.
And then—the stroke came.
I will not introduce the woman I am today and pretend it didn’t happen.
But listen carefully:
My story does not begin with my stroke.
The stroke did not give me my purpose. It did not make me a writer. It did not teach me to love words. It did not put encouragement in my heart. It did not give me my desire to speak. It did not create my love for the world.
I brought all of that INTO the stroke.
And that distinction matters.
Because the stroke came for some of the very things I had spent my life using:
My voice.
My words.
My hands.
The little girl who loved words grew into a woman who wrote them—and now sometimes I have to fight just to get those words where I want them to go. The woman who dreamed about microphones grew into a woman who found her voice—and now sometimes I have to fight for that voice.
The writer has words inside her—and sometimes her own hands fight her over putting them onto the page.
There is something almost unspeakably cruel about that.
But I am speaking it anyway. 🎤
Because I’m still here.
And maybe Why Can’t I Be Loud?! means something even deeper to me now. I asked a question about voice.
Then life came for my literal voice.
And I am still answering.
I. AM. HERE.
My voice may be different. It is still mine. My words may take longer to reach you. They are still mine. My hands may fight me while I try to put those words into the world.
They are still mine.
And I am still writing. Still speaking. Still laughing. Still questioning. Still believing. Still learning. Still loving.
Still I rise.
Not because suffering made me extraordinary. Not because every painful thing needs a pretty lesson attached to it. Not because I am interested in performing strength for anybody.
I rise because I am still here.
And Beloveds, here is the part I desperately want you to understand:
I am fighting for these words because I still want to give them to you.
For you, Beloveds.
That little girl picked up words because something in them called to her. This grown woman keeps fighting to put words into the world because somewhere out there is another human being who may need one.
Maybe you need to hear that your life is not finished. Maybe you need somebody to sit beside you without demanding that you clean yourself up first. Maybe you need permission to laugh while you’re hurting. Maybe you need to be angry. Maybe you need to grieve. Maybe you need to begin again.
Maybe you just need somebody somewhere on this great big planet to say:
I see you.
You matter to me.
You are not alone.
Then come sit with me.
Bring yourself. Bring the beautiful and the ugly. Bring the questions and the mess. Bring the faith and the doubt. Bring the laughter that shows up at absolutely inappropriate times. 🤣 Bring whatever voice you have today.
You don’t have to sound like me. You don’t have to believe everything I believe. You don’t have to live where I live, look like I look, love like I love, speak like I speak, move like I move, or understand the world exactly the way I do.
There is still a chair here for you.
Because this was never about making the whole world Cassandra. Good grief. One is plenty. 🤣
This is about loving the whole world while letting people remain themselves.
So let me introduce myself.
I am Cassandra.
I am the little girl who loved words. I am the woman who kept writing them. I am the scared woman who wanted the microphone anyway. I am the woman who was called ugly and refused to surrender her love.
I am the woman God loved then and loves now. I am the woman who learned to love herself. I am the woman whose body now sometimes fights her for her voice, her words, and her hands.
And I am the woman who keeps reaching for the microphone anyway. 🎤
Same heart. Same mission. Different settings.
ALL OF ME.
I am still writing.
I am not done.
And neither are you.
So take the step. Then take another one. And another. 🥾
One step. One step. One step.
However long I have a voice, I intend to use it. However long I have words, I intend to give them. However I have to get those words from my heart into this world, I intend to try.
Still I rise.
For you, Beloveds.
For love.
For this great big messy, hurting, beautiful world. 🌎
And because after all this, somebody is inevitably still going to ask:
Why can’t I be loud?!
Well…
Who said I can’t? 🎤
Asking for A Friend, Cassandra
#YourLifeMattersToMe
Note: One step. One step. One step. You are loved. You are NOT alone. Keep on being…YOU!
But before I give you the link, I want you to understand why I made it.
This is A-B-B-A.
It is a collection of movies, music, conversations, teachings, stories, serious things, ridiculous things, romance, action, adventure, faith, questions, laughter, tears and sometimes something I included for no deeper reason than:
I LIKE DAT SONG.
🤣🎶💃🏿
And all of it belongs.
Because this isn’t really a collection about movies.
It isn’t really a collection about music.
It isn’t even a collection where every piece is supposed to teach us something.
It is about something much simpler.
And much bigger.
LOVE.
❤️
If you’ve spent any time with me, you’ve heard me ask:
WHY CAN’T I BE LOUD?
But being loud has never meant everybody shouting all the time.
Sometimes we should be loud.
Sometimes we should be quiet.
Sometimes love requires us to stand up and say:
THIS MATTERS.
Sometimes love requires us to stop talking long enough to hear somebody else.
Being quiet by choice is not the same thing as being silenced.
Having a voice means having the freedom to decide when to speak, when to shout, when to sing, when to question, when to laugh, when to protest—and when to simply listen.
My voice matters.
And so does yours.
That is where this collection begins.
❤️🌎
I am a woman of faith.
So the name ABBA means something deeply personal to me.
Abba, Father.
🙏🏿
I love God.
I believe God loves this world.
And that shapes how I try to move through it.
But hear me:
You do not have to believe what I believe to be welcome here.
If you love God, come.
If you’re an atheist, come.
If you’re agnostic, come.
If you’re questioning everything, come.
If you’ve never known God, come.
If you’re angry with God, come.
If you don’t know what you think, come.
Come as YOU.
❤️
Different races.
Different cultures.
Different bodies.
Different abilities.
Different histories.
Different beliefs.
Different voices.
Different ways of moving through this world.
Those distinctions are real.
We don’t have to erase them.
I don’t have to stop being me so you can recognize my humanity.
And you don’t have to become me before I recognize yours.
Love has every color.
🎨🌎
So the question isn’t whether we can make everybody the same.
I don’t want that.
The question is:
WHAT DOES LOVE DO?
Does love see you?
Does love listen?
Does love stay?
Does love protect?
Does love tell the truth?
Does love make room?
Does love stand beside somebody when standing beside them costs something?
Does love speak when silence would participate in harm?
Can love disagree without disappearing another human being?
Can love learn somebody else’s world without demanding that they abandon it?
Can love say:
I see you.
❤️
Because that is the center of everything I have been trying to say.
YOU MATTER TO ME.
Why?
Because I see you.
Your life matters to me.
Your voice matters to me.
Your joy matters to me.
Your pain matters to me.
Your story matters to me.
YOU matter to me.
Not because you’re like me.
Not because you agree with me.
Not because you’ve figured everything out.
Not because you’ve lived perfectly.
Not because of what you can do for me.
You matter because you are here.
🌎❤️
And that is why this collection can hold so many different things.
Some of these movies deal with serious subjects.
Some will make us think.
Some may make us uncomfortable.
Some may introduce us to lives very different from our own.
Some are about friendship.
Some are about family.
Some are about faith.
Some are about injustice.
Some are about courage.
Some are about grief.
Some are about romantic love.
Some are action.
Some are adventure.
And some are simply:
PASS THE POPCORN.
🍿🤣
Because life isn’t only the difficult stuff.
And love shouldn’t show up only when somebody is hurting.
Love comes to the celebration too.
❤️🔥💃🏿
Sometimes love dances.
Sometimes love laughs until its stomach hurts.
Sometimes love sits around watching movies with friends.
Sometimes love turns the music WAY too loud.
Sometimes love sings every word.
Sometimes love doesn’t know a single word and sings anyway.
🤣🤣🤣
Sometimes love says:
WE FOUND LOVE.
NOW DANCE.
💃🏿🕺🏿❤️
That’s not frivolous.
Joy matters.
I don’t merely want people to survive this world.
I want us to live in it.
Love in it.
Laugh in it.
Learn from one another in it.
Speak in it.
Listen in it.
Dance in it.
Rest in it.
Question things in it.
Change things that need changing.
Get loud about things that require our voices.
Get quiet when somebody else’s voice needs the room.
And occasionally do absolutely NOTHING profound.
🤣
That is part of being alive too.
And maybe that’s why movies and music can connect people in ways arguments sometimes can’t.
For a couple of hours, a story lets us enter somebody else’s life.
For four minutes, a song can put completely different people on the same dance floor.
We don’t have to solve every difference first.
Sometimes we simply recognize one another.
Oh.
You love too.
You hurt too.
You laugh too.
You’ve been afraid too.
You’ve needed somebody too.
You’ve screwed up too.
You’ve needed another chance too.
You dance terribly too.
🤣💃🏿
I see you.
And maybe tomorrow we understand one another a little better because tonight we shared a song.
❤️🌎🎶
That’s the connection.
That’s Why Can’t I Be Loud?
My voice matters.
Your voice matters too.
That’s You Matter to Me.
Your life is worthy of being seen.
That’s You Are Not Alone.
There is room beside me.
That’s:
One step. One step. One step.
You don’t have to solve everything before you belong.
And that’s:
KEEP ON BEING…YOU!
Because love should never require your disappearance.
❤️🔥
So I’m opening the collection.
The link will be public.
Come watch.
Come listen.
Come think.
Come disagree.
Come learn.
Come laugh.
Come cry.
Come worship if you worship.
Come question if you question.
Come dance.
Come sit quietly.
Come be loud.
Come be YOU.
Just don’t require somebody else’s disappearance in order to make room for yourself.
🌎❤️
And underneath all of this is the reason I keep trying.
The reason I keep making room.
The reason I keep saying your life matters to me.
It’s actually pretty simple.
God loves you.
So do I.
🙏🏿❤️🌎
And after all of that—
because apparently we have been serious long enough—
🤣🤣🤣
GET IN THE CAR.
TURN UP RASCAL FLATTS.
WE RIDIN’.
🚗💨🎶💃🏿❤️🌎
Because sometimes using your voice sounds like advocacy.
Sometimes it sounds like testimony.
Sometimes it sounds like telling somebody:
I see you.
And sometimes it sounds like singing your favorite damn song.
❤️🔥
Come enjoy some life with me, Beloveds.
Asking for A Friend, Cassandra
#YourLifeMattersToMe
Note: One step. One step. One step. You are loved. You are NOT alone. Keep on being…YOU!
These are photos of my brain 🧠. The white areas are where the stroke happened.
They said my brain was on 🔥 fire. Burning what it could devour. Initially, I was completely paralyzed. I couldn’t speak. I could hear everything.
I found myself yelling ” I’m coming “at the top of my 🫁 lungs. No one could hear my silent, my tortured, my horrifying screams.
More on that later…
Tonight I stopped by to encourage someone. Starting with me.
I don’t ask why me. I HAVE wondered why the hard must be so damnably hard ALL day.
Yet, I fight on. So, too must you. Recently, I have had a major setback. They say my brain is burning embers causing my body to experience the same symptoms as before. At first, I freaked out. I hollered ” OH, God not AGAIN “
I couldn’t bear weight on my right leg. My left was fine. I was in excruciating pain.
After. The MRI showed no NEW stroke I was told I may have to live this way for the rest of my days.
Now, when I’m tired I can barely speak due to numb left cheek. Still, I have 📞 calls I have to make. Sis and niece no longer do anything I can do myself.
Now, I can finally get on my potty chair. I call it The Potty Wars.☺️🤠
I have gotten down to an hour. Last week it took three hours. Egads.
My life would have been easier if the stroke affected the other side so I could use my right hand.
Life said HA! DEAL WITH WHATYOU HAVE NOW.
So, I deal. I have to. So, do you!
We got this.
Life is NOT over!
I copied all the images for things I have planned for you. Yet, a stroke interrupted my life, my plans
Don’t know if I’ll get to finish.
However long I have, you shall have my heart/my love, beloveds.
I love you. Be encouraged.
loving you for the rest of my life, with the best of my life,
In Sevierville, Tennessee, people gathered around Dolly Parton’s statue.
They brought flowers.
They brought handwritten notes.
They stood together in the Tennessee town that knew Dolly before the rest of the world did.
Some cried.
Some sang.
Some simply stood there.
Because sometimes grief does not need a speech.
Sometimes you just need to stand near something that reminds you:
She was here.
😭🌎
And then Tennessee became too small to hold the goodbye.
🇬🇧
London.
Outside Buckingham Palace, the Band of the Coldstream Guards played “9 to 5” during the Changing of the Guard.
Think about that.
A little girl born into poverty in the mountains of Tennessee—
one of twelve children—
grew up and wrote some songs.
And the morning after the world learned she was gone, one of those songs was ringing through Buckingham Palace.
😭🇬🇧🌎
Then—
New York.
🗽💗
At 9:25 p.m., the Empire State Building began glowing pink.
Not randomly.
9:25.
A beautiful little nod to “9 to 5.”
For an hour, one of the most recognizable buildings in the world became a pink light in the Manhattan sky for Dolly.
From a one-room cabin in Tennessee—
to Buckingham Palace—
to the New York City skyline.
🌎😭
But Beloveds, that still isn’t the part that has me sitting here.
Because today people are remembering the songs.
Of course they are.
“Jolene.”
“9 to 5.”
“I Will Always Love You.”
They are remembering the rhinestones.
That hair.
That laugh.
That unmistakable voice.
The movies.
The jokes.
The woman who could walk into a room looking like somebody turned the sparkle setting all the way up—
and somehow make everybody else feel comfortable.
😂😭💗
But underneath all that glitter was something quieter.
Something I don’t want us to miss.
Dolly remembered where she came from.
📚❤️
Her father, Robert Lee Parton, could not read or write.
Dolly adored him.
She could have grown up, become rich and famous, looked back at that poverty and said:
I escaped.
Instead, she looked backward and asked:
What can I do with what I have now?
😭
And in 1995, in the same Tennessee county where she had grown up, Dolly started the Imagination Library.
It began by giving books to local children.
Then it grew.
And grew.
And grew.
Until children around the world were receiving them.
More than 330 million books have now been gifted through that program.
📚📚📚🌎
But listen to this part.
Because THIS is Dolly to me.
The books don’t simply arrive at a house.
They arrive with the child’s own name on them.
😭📫📚
Dolly understood something enormous inside something very small.
Yes, a child needs a book.
But a child also needs to know:
Something came for ME.
My name is on it.
Somebody thought I was worth sending something to.
This belongs to me.
I matter enough to be remembered.
😭😭😭
Do you see why that gets me?
Because Dolly wasn’t merely mailing books.
She was mailing possibility.
📫
To one mailbox.
Then another.
Then another.
Millions and millions of times.
A woman whose daddy couldn’t read helped make sure somebody else’s baby had a book in their hands.
Tell me that isn’t love becoming action.
❤️🩹📚🌎
And maybe THAT is why the mourning feels so enormous today.
We aren’t simply watching the world say goodbye to a celebrity.
We are watching people reckon with what one human being can do with a life.
Dolly had money.
She used it.
Dolly had fame.
She used it.
Dolly had a platform.
She used it.
Dolly had wounds and memories and a childhood she could not change.
She used those too.
She took something that hurt somebody she loved—
her daddy’s inability to read—
and turned it into books for children he would never meet.
😭📚
That will preach all by itself.
You do not have to have Dolly Parton’s money.
You do not need Buckingham Palace playing your song.
You do not need your name glowing over Manhattan.
You have something.
A story.
A lesson.
A hand.
A voice.
A dollar.
An hour.
A kindness.
A phone call.
A seat beside somebody who shouldn’t have to sit alone.
Something.
What are you going to do with what you have?
👀❤️🩹
Because eventually every song ends.
Every spotlight goes dark.
Every one of us leaves.
But love has this peculiar ability to keep traveling after the person who started it is gone.
Sometimes it travels through music.
Sometimes through somebody else’s memory.
And sometimes—
😭📫📚
—it arrives in a mailbox,
with a little child’s name written on it.
Rest in Heaven, Dolly Parton.
🌎😭🌹
From Sevierville,
to London,
to New York,
to millions of little mailboxes around the world—
the world is telling you goodbye.
And somewhere, another child is opening another book.
We will always love you.
❤️🩹📚🌎
Asking for A Friend, Cassandra
#YourLifeMattersToMe
Note: One step. One step. One step. You are loved. You are NOT alone. Keep on being…YOU!
Sources: Reuters reporting on worldwide tributes to Dolly Parton; Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library; Los Angeles Times reporting on Dolly’s literacy legacy; CBS New York reporting on the Empire State Building tribute.
MAYBE YOU NEVER HAD TO BE “ENOUGH” TO DESERVE TENDERNESS 😭❤️🔥
Beloveds,
Whew!😭
This one found a place in me I didn’t know was still hiding.
Maybe you didn’t have to be strong enough, funny enough, productive enough, independent enough, helpful enough, spiritually together enough—or anything else enough—to deserve tenderness.
😭❤️🔥
Read that again.
Because some of us learned how to be valuable before we ever learned how to simply be loved.
So we became useful.
We became dependable.
We became the strong one.
The funny one.
The praying one.
The fixing one.
The encouraging one.
The one who could make everybody laugh while quietly falling apart.
The one who said, “I got it.”
The one who hated asking for help.
The one who would crawl before calling somebody and saying:
“I can’t do this by myself.”
And somewhere along the way, usefulness started feeling dangerously close to worth.
So when we could produce, we felt valuable.
When we could help, we felt valuable.
When somebody needed us, we knew exactly who we were.
But then life happened.
Illness happened.
Grief happened.
Age happened.
Loss happened.
Heartbreak happened.
Exhaustion happened.
Disability happened.
Depression happened.
Financial trouble happened.
Divorce happened.
Caregiving happened.
Failure happened.
Some kind of happened happened.
And suddenly we couldn’t be who we had always been.
We couldn’t carry everybody.
We couldn’t fix everything.
We couldn’t show up the same way.
Sometimes we couldn’t even take care of ourselves without somebody helping.
And THAT is when the question underneath everything finally crawled out:
If I can’t be useful to you right now…will you still love me?
😭😭😭❤️🔥
Beloveds.
There it is.
Maybe that’s why receiving love can make some of us cry harder than losing something.
Because when somebody sees us unable to perform and stays anyway, it confronts the lie we’ve been carrying:
I have to earn tenderness.
No.
You don’t.
You never did.
❤️🔥
You don’t have to entertain people into loving you.
You don’t have to exhaust yourself into loving you.
You don’t have to overgive so nobody notices how badly you need to receive.
You don’t have to keep everybody comfortable while you are uncomfortable.
You don’t have to apologize every five minutes because somebody had to help you.
And you don’t have to immediately start calculating how you’re going to pay somebody back because they loved you during a difficult season.
Sometimes love says:
“Sit down. I have this.”
And perhaps your work is not jumping back up.
Perhaps your work is learning to sit there without turning tenderness into shame.
😭❤️🔥
Because some of us know how to give love beautifully.
Receiving it?
WHEW.
That’s another ministry entirely.
Giving lets us feel strong.
Receiving exposes our need.
Giving lets us control what leaves our hands.
Receiving requires us to open them.
And open hands can feel terrifying when life has taught us that everything comes with strings.
So we start searching for the invoice.
What do they want?
What do I owe?
How long before they get tired of me?
How much inconvenience am I allowed to cause before their love expires?
Why Can't I Be Loud?! 