I Moved the Avalanche

When I heard the word “avalanche” in the gibberish, I knew.

That’s how the Songwriter’s Journey works — the Brothers sing the melody in nonsense sounds, and you listen for what wants to come through. Most of the time it’s gradual, a word here, a phrase there. But sometimes a word arrives fully formed and lands in your chest like it was always meant to be there. “Avalanche” was like that. I heard it and I thought: oh. This is a big song.

I almost didn’t write it.

When I said yes to the Returning Artist Journey, I knew what I was getting into. The first journey had been, in some ways, easier — my dad had just died, California was still raw, the feelings were right at the surface waiting to be sung. This was different. These songs would require excavation. I’d have to go to the places I’d been carefully not touching, and I knew, somewhere in the back of my mind, that one of those places was romantic love.

I resisted it for as long as I could.

Here’s what you need to know about me and romantic love: I have mostly been okay without it. I’m child-free and single by choice. I don’t want to get married. I don’t want to live with a partner. These things are true in my bones — they were true when I wrote this song and they’re still true now. I get my deepest fulfillment from my friendships, my chosen family, my work, my music. There’s a narrative in our culture that romantic love is the most important kind — that without it you’re incomplete, waiting, half a person. I don’t believe that. Humans survived because of community, because of a village, not because of one singular romantic bond.

And yet.

There was a soft part of me — there still is — that held a quiet door open. Not searching, not hoping, not swiping through apps. Just: if it appears, if it arrives when I’m not looking for it, maybe I don’t slam the door in its face. Maybe.

The avalanche was everything standing between me and that maybe.

When I discovered live music as a teenager, I discovered something else alongside it: I got attention. From interesting people, in interesting places. I was traveling, making friends, seeing the world through the lens of music I loved. And I was wanted, desired, seen. For someone who’d felt invisible in other ways, that mattered more than I understood at the time.

By the time I was around twenty, I was mostly fine being single. But something was starting to poke at me quietly. I was open to the idea of someone — and through that openness, I found someone. Not through an app, but through real life, the old-fashioned way. My best friend Katie had a boyfriend. That boyfriend had a best friend. That's how it happened — the way these things often do, through the people you already love.

We talked about getting married. We talked about kids, about where we’d live. We went to a jewelry store together and I picked out a ring. He put it on file. It was a real, concrete, future-shaped thing.

We broke up my last year of college, after about two and a half years together.

I remember the almost immediate feeling of snapping out of a haze. I had lost myself in that relationship — stopped going to shows, pulled back from friends, quietly set aside the things that made me me. When it ended, those things rushed back in. And with them came a clarity I hadn’t expected: this was one of the best things that ever happened to me. Had I married him, I would have a completely different life. Not this one. Not the songs, not the journey, not any of it.

I’m grateful we broke up. I mean that completely.

But there was something else underneath the relief. A message that had lodged itself somewhere deep, that I carried for years without fully examining it. He used to tell me I was wonderful — smart, beautiful, going to be so successful. And it still didn’t work. It still wasn’t enough.

So I drew the only conclusion that seemed available: what’s the point?

I’m fat. Plus size, person of size — all of those words apply and I use all of them, with love for myself and without apology. I say it directly because there’s still so much discomfort around it, so much fatphobia still woven into the way we talk about bodies and worth and desirability. If naming it makes you uncomfortable, sit with that discomfort. It’s worth examining.

After things ended with him, and after a couple more connections that were complicated in their own ways and also didn’t work out, I landed somewhere that felt like logic but was really protection: if I’m the best and I’m still not enough, there’s no point. I’ll live my life. I’ll eat what I want. I won’t do this for the male gaze. I won’t shrink myself — literally or figuratively — for someone else’s comfort.

I swung the pendulum all the way to one side. And in a lot of ways, that was right. That was necessary. I needed to be in that place for a while.

But the avalanche was still there. The fear of rejection. The calcified belief that I wasn’t worthy of romantic love — not because anyone had told me that explicitly, but because the evidence kept pointing that way, and I’d built a wall around it and called the wall independence.

Writing this song was the hardest thing I’ve done in a recording session. Every line felt like pulling my heart out of my chest and slamming it onto the page. I remember working through it slowly, word by word, feeling the weight of each one.

And then I got to what I thought was the end. I’m worthy of love. I’m worthy. And finally it will come to me. I thought: that’s it. I did it. I went there. I said the thing.

Thorald looked at me and said: you’re not done.

I remember staring at him. What do you mean I’m not done? I had just ripped my soul out and put it in this song. The ocean doesn’t go any deeper. And he said: the story isn’t finished.

So I went deeper.

What came out was the outro — the part that surprised me most when it arrived, because it wasn’t about romantic love at all. It was about trust. About time. About looking back at all the moments when I couldn’t see the plan and wishing I’d been able to trust it anyway.

The guy from college, the ring on file at the jewelry store, the relationships that came after, the wall I built and called independence — all of it was part of the plan. Had I married him, I wouldn’t have California. I wouldn’t have this job. I wouldn’t have these songs. I wouldn’t have this life, which I genuinely love.

I couldn’t have trusted that at twenty-two. But I can see it now.

I am worthy of love. I’m worthy at this size, in this body, with this life that doesn’t look like what people expect a woman’s life to look like. I’m worthy of a love that fits me — unconventional, unconfined, on my own terms — if it comes. And if it doesn’t, I’m still worthy. That’s the thing I was most afraid to believe and most needed to say out loud.

I’m not sure I fully believed it when I wrote the song. I believe it more now. It’s a practice, like joy — something you have to keep choosing, keep saying, keep letting in.

The avalanche is still there sometimes. But I know how to move it now.

And there’s one more song to tell you about. Something that came after this one — because of this one. A pattern I noticed in my romantic history that I couldn’t have seen clearly until I’d done this excavation first. That story is coming. But first: I’m going to California to record it. 🩷