Knoxville's Kelsea Ballerini feels her way through life's highs and lows in new poetry book

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Things seem to be going pretty well for country-pop hitmaker Kelsea Ballerini.

Ballerini spent much of her fall sharing stages with family pop powerhouse The Jonas Brothers — a teenage dream come true for the 28-year-old "Hole In The Bottle" singer from Knoxville.

That wasn't the only dream she achieved this season, either. Days after Ballerini returned from the road, she earned the highest honor of her career to-date by winning two CMA Awards for small-town Kenny Chesney duet "Half Of My Hometown." The song is all about Knoxville.

Now, Ballerini sets sights on another first-time achievement: Author. She released this week a book of pandemic-penned poetry that spans her life's innermost highs and lows — from a jarring revelation that she once witnessed the killing of a Central High School classmate to being raised in a divorced family, her self-described "ruthless" ambition and intimate moments in her closest relationships.

Called "Feel Your Way Through," she debuted the collection Tuesday via Ballantine Books.

As for why Ballerini decided to dig deep into her emotional closet?

"Because why not?" she told USA TODAY Network-Tennessee via Zoom last week. "I've spent so much of my career — my short career so far, obviously — presenting myself as this glitter girl, and that's certainly part of me. I love being happy-go-lucky. I love presenting that part of myself, because that's the part of myself that society allow and celebrates.

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Cover art for Kelsea Ballerini book "Feel Your Way Through"
Cover art for Kelsea Ballerini book "Feel Your Way Through"

"But there's much more to everybody. We're all more than one thing. And I do have struggles and I have had things in my life that've certainly been traumatic and have made me who I am. When you hear someone — especially someone with a platform — talk about things like I talk about in the book, it destigmatizes them and it allows for more conversation to happen."

'I still needed to write'

Ballerini began writing "Feel Your Way Through" after COVID-19 derailed her "kelsea" album release plans and headlining tour in March 2020.

She never set out to write a book, but the singer-songwriter needed to detach from music after pandemic precautions pulled the proverbial rug out from under her.

"[Music] made me sad," Ballerini said. "The place that I found connection and celebration from no longer brought that to me. It was a place of loss ... but I still needed to write; I still needed to process life and what was going on around me."

Ballerini began unpacking parts of her life she left long dormant while chasing chart-topping songs and sold out tour dates. She took her writing to coffee shops around Nashville or on trips to Knoxville and secluded writing retreats with her dog, Dibs.

"Feel Your Way Through" presents Ballerini's "full story" in five chapters, she said — beginning with broad strokes before introducing readers to some of the heaviest moments of her life. She pinpoints an emotional cocktail that comes with navigating intimacy and wrestles with being on the right side of history in a society often divided.

In one poem, "Kangaroo," Ballerini details her teenage struggle with body image and an eating disorder.

In "Kangaroo," she writes:

"My throat ached from the vomit
And my hands shook from the pills
My legs sore from the extra mile
That I ran on the treadmill
I stopped when I was 18
The gym, the purging, the caffeine
I just wanted to be happy
But I was starting to hate me"

The poem takes its name from Ballerini unkindly being called a kangaroo as a teenager, she said. In publishing the story, she hopes people realize the weight words can carry.

"It is so, so common to have body image issues," Ballerini said, adding: "It's easy to feel a lot of shame and guilt around that and even embarrassed, ya know? [But] if you put up your hand and go, 'Yeah, this something I struggle with.' Like, you too? Cool. Let's talk about it."

Knoxville's Kelsea Ballerini arrives for the 2021 CMT Music Awards in Nashville this summer.
Knoxville's Kelsea Ballerini arrives for the 2021 CMT Music Awards in Nashville this summer.

And in the book, Ballerini describes a moment at Central High in Knoxville when she witnessed a "sudden, loud and sharp" gunshot inside the school cafeteria that killed 15-year-old schoolmate Ryan McDonald.

In "His Name Was Ryan," she wrote:

His name was Ryan, and he died on the cafeteria floor
From a gunshot wound to the chest
I can't be too sure, but I think I saw him
Take his last breath
We were both 15
That day, we went from strangers to lifelong friends
I think about him often, who he could have been

Ballerini never thought she would share this experience publicly; the singer said she remains hyper-aware in large crowds and can be disturbed by loud noises, like pyrotechnics at a concert.

"It's certainly something that shows up in my life often," Ballerini said, adding: "I'm in crowds for a living and I feel such a heavy responsibility for safety and keeping people safe. I think part of that is being a mindful artist, but the other part of that is watching something very traumatic happen. Part of my response to that is making sure everyone around me is safe."

Rediscovering Ballerini

"Feel Your Way Through" isn't all about taking inventory of life's stormy moments, though. Ballerini takes stock of love and happiness, too — a topic she's not quite as comfortable cornering.

"It's so much easier for me to write about sad topics and heartbreak," Ballerini said. "I literally have a song called 'I Hate Love Songs' because I can't write them. It's so, so hard for me."

But she finds her way to writing about marriage, particularly detailing quiet moments that carry a newfound weight; Ballerini and Australian country singer Morgan Evans wed in 2017.

In "The Little Things," she writes:

It's holding hands across the center console
It's listening to his guitar through the floorboards
It's sitting in silence
It' the fleeting, unconscious, innate moments
Its the little things

Knoxville's Kelsea Ballerini arrives for the 55th CMA Awards in Nashville earlier this month.
Knoxville's Kelsea Ballerini arrives for the 55th CMA Awards in Nashville earlier this month.

"[This book] is my first time being able to start articulating how I feel about marriage and love and my perspective on it now," Ballerini said. "It's already proven to help me in music because it's opened that door that I could not get cracked open before."

And the book sprinkles in parts of Ballerini's life — from taking Sunday drives to binging crime podcasts — that fans might not have known before reading.

"Because I wrote this book when I had all this extra time and space ... how do you fill it up? When you're not used to having it, what do you do with your time?" she said. "I fell in love with painting. I fell in love with getting in the car and going on a drive and listening to old records. I fell back in love with Fleetwood Mac and Sheryl Crow.

"I rediscovered bits of myself that I do love."

Could any of the poems become songs in the future?

"Maybe," Ballerini said. "As I wrote this book, I unlocked so much of myself and processed so much of myself. I think because I have all this new space in me — that I discovered —I think there will be a lot of music that comes from that."

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Kelsea Ballerini shares poetry in new book 'Feel Your Way Through'