Songfacts®:

• When Brandi Carlile became a mother, she didn't expect to be raising her inner child along with her two daughters. When she noticed them struggling with some of the same issues she did, Carlile wrote "Letter To The Past," which finds her giving advice to her younger self about embracing emotions and dealing with failure. In particular, she was inspired by an incident when her daughter Evangeline threw a tantrum after losing a board game, exhibiting the same type of rigidity Carlile did as a child.
  
  "I just worry about my girl because she lives in a world that's built for flex, for change and openness," she told Stereogum in 2021. "And she's really strong, but she's rigid. So we work through that, and it's super beautiful because everything I'm saying to her, I need to hear. And everything she's saying to me, I need to hear."
  
  But Carlile is careful to acknowledge their shared traits while recognizing her daughter as an individual. "We have to talk, us rigid people. We have to open our mouths and say how we feel, and let ourselves be challenged and influenced," she continued. "I'm not trying to project. She's not me. She's feminine and gentle, and she just loves nature and pine cones. And she creates visual art. She doesn't like music very much. There's a lot about her that's not me. But it's like a lot of raising her is going back and re-raising myself at the same time."
• Written during the COVID-19 pandemic, In These Silent Days is a companion piece to Carlile's memoir, Broken Horses, which also lent its name to her Grammy-winning song of the same name.
• The album was produced by Dave Cobb and Shooter Jennings, who also helmed her previous release, By The Way, I Forgive You, which won the Grammy for Best Americana Album in 2019. Cobb and Jennings have been working together since 2005, when Cobb produced Jennings' debut album, Put The "O" Back In Country.