Chizabam’s new single “To Survive” draws on a life shaped by loss, responsibility, and the determination to keep moving. At four years old, he first learned that his mother was dying. By eighteen, after completing his first college semester, he stood at her funeral, having spent fourteen years as both her son and her caretaker. The experience was not a distant childhood memory by then, it had become a defining part of his life, carrying the weight of years spent watching someone he loved fight to stay alive.
The night his mother died remains at the center of that story. Standing on the back step of an ambulance, Chizabam watched through a window as paramedics tried to shock her heart back into rhythm. They did not succeed. That moment became a dividing line between one life and another. Some experiences change everything in an instant, and this moment was one of them. “To Survive” carries the emotional reality of what followed, without dressing it up or making it easier than it was.
By nineteen, Chizabam found himself in Dallas, starting over from nothing. No roadmap waited for him, and no safety net eased the transition. What he did have was a pen and a refusal to let that night write the final chapter of his story. That detail gives “To Survive” its more profound meaning. Survival here is not simply about enduring a painful experience; it is about deciding that loss will not determine everything that comes afterward. Creating becomes part of moving forward.