No. 102 - Simon & Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water” changed my life

Hannah Vanbiber’s quiet, clear realization

Aug 08, 2025

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🏆 A top-read essay

This Song Changed My Life is an independent music publication featuring weekly essays from people all around the world about the songs that mean the most to them. Created (and illustrated) by Grace Lilly.

• 5 min read •

“Bridge Over Troubled Water” changed my life twice.

Whenever I think about this song, I see a familiar street in Baton Rouge, and two six-year-old girls sitting up in the cab of a U-Haul, pulling away from their waving grandparents, who are shrinking in the rearview mirror along with everything the girls knew.

Those little girls were me (duh) and my twin sister, Sarah. It was the day we left my birthplace in the great swoop of the Louisiana bayou to settle in an unknown but also swampy metropolis called Orlando. Rumor had it that Mickey Mouse lived there, but all I knew was that I didn’t want to.

A couple of years before that, the doctor had suggested this new thing to curb thumb sucking where you slowly cut your child’s favorite blankie into smaller and smaller squares. (The 90s, am I right!?) After that first cut, I cried all night into my mom’s lap and she swore off the idea forever.

But now we had cut away our entire homeland, and the only square of security blanket left was that U-Haul.

Hannah and her sister, Sarah, in their grandparents’ driveway

The first time I heard “Bridge Over Troubled Water” was not long after that drive to Florida. I remember lying on the floor between our tall Sony speakers, in the dark, listening. Letting the music cover me like a security blanket.

I grew up on hymns, so when I heard “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” my young spirit knew what it was: a hymn. Not a hymn to God; a hymn of praise to the faithful ones in our lives. The ones who give us the gift of belonging.

Like a bridge over troubled water, I will lay me down

After that, we moved a lot. My dad is a pastor, and the quirk they don’t tell you about ministry jobs is that getting a promotion means moving to a new church. Over the years, Sarah and I got used to being the “new girls.” The fact that we were twins bolstered our appeal but also made us stand out in a way that made me nervous. I already knew we weren’t cool; we were homeschooled and wore mom jeans! The last thing I wanted was to stand out! I wanted to fit in!

I remember walking into my first gymnastics class in a new city, and everyone knew each other, where to put their shoes, and cool hand claps that we hadn’t done in the last place I’d lived. And I was just standing there in my purple bedazzled leotard and bare feet, feeling too big and too small all at once, my eyes welling up.

When you’re weary, feelin’ small
When tears are in your eyes, I will dry them all

In my loneliest, most fearful moments, I would put on my headphones, press play on my Walkman, and listen to Art Garfunkel’s piercingly clear voice sing this hymn of belonging.

“But wait,” you might say, “you had a TWIN! Twins are basically the concept of an in-group personified!” Yeah, and I also had a loving mom and dad. But try telling that to a 13-year-old in mom jeans!

Surviving change, for me, demanded reinvention. How can you reinvent yourself when your twin is there, all the time, reminding you who you are? When your parents are really involved in your life? It annoyed me to no end! I wanted to be unmoored from anything that would stop me from adapting. Only later would I realize the upshot might be that I’d become unmoored from myself. (Yes, that’s a “troubled water” metaphor, folks!)

That changed when I was 17. I was crying about a boy. One that I had changed myself for. I was lying in the dark, crying, listening to my early-aughts-sad-girl music (Death Cab and Elliott Smith and Iron & Wine and, of course, the godfathers of sad-girl music, Simon & Garfunkel), and Sarah came in and just started stroking my hair while I cried. “Bridge” came on, and I remember, finally, belatedly, up through the cacophony of my teenage sadness and selfishness and strivings, came a quiet but clear thought like a crystal bell, like Art Garfunkel’s high tenor:

“Oh, it’s her.”

That was the second time “Bridge Over Troubled Water” changed my life. The bridge was Sarah, the one who knows me. It was my parents, who had provided the solid ground stretching across the waves and turbulence of childhood and anchored my search for belonging.

I had always belonged.

I dried my eyes and forgot about that boy. (Full disclosure, it might’ve taken me a little longer than that, but the change had begun.)

When my mom got diagnosed with cancer in 2019, I went into my room in New York City, turned off the lights, and turned on “Bridge Over Troubled Water.”

This time, it wasn’t the U-Haul driving away that I saw, or the grandparents getting smaller in the rearview mirror. It was the inside of the cab. There were my dad, my mom, and, of course, my sister. Making our way in the world together. These are the people who have made my life, my dreams, anything that shines for me, possible.

Now my mom is in her third recurrence of cancer, and we don’t know what the year ahead holds. I have fear and I have sadness and I have hope. And often at night, I turn off the lights and close my eyes and listen to Garfunkel sing the promise of belonging. ◆

About Hannah

Hannah Vanbiber is a writer living in New York City. She works full-time for The Athletic, the sports arm of The New York Times, and gushes and groans about pop culture on her Substack, Hannah’s Weekly.

Instagram @hannahvanbiber

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