Thanksgiving Will Look Far Different for Rachel Platten Compared to Years Past: ‘I Remember Feeling So Scared’ (Exclusive)

It was Thanksgiving, and Rachel Platten instinctively knew she had much to be thankful for. But while she found herself surrounded by friends and family and feelings of somewhat contagious gratitude, Platten says she couldn’t help but feel completely alone. 

“I remember feeling so scared that my chronic pain would act up or that I wouldn’t make it through the night because of anxiety or something,” Platten, 43, tells PEOPLE in a revealing new interview. “It was a very, very dark time.”

But this year, Thanksgiving will look much different, as the Emmy Award-winning multi-platinum artist and singer-songwriter will spend the morning performing in this year’s Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade alongside fellow music powerhouses such as Jennifer Hudson, Kylie Minogue and Idina Menzel. 

“A couple years ago, I couldn’t imagine being out in public, let alone on a float in front of millions of people on national TV,” says the “Fight Song” hitmaker. “But look at me now. I was able to make it out of all that pain and instead, I get to shine and be in front of millions of people on Thanksgiving.”

Indeed, Platten has been nothing but completely transparent and vulnerable about the mental health struggles that have plagued her in recent years — including everything from postpartum depression to unrelenting anxiety.

“It’s quite a miracle that I made it through it and that I am here and that I’m so strong,” Platten explains. “The same emotional waves take me like they always did, but I have all these tools like therapy and journaling and meditation in my tool chest now that I know how to work with them and let them move through. It’s not necessarily that I changed, but I have learned how to accept all of me and love all of me, and that is what I’m most grateful for these days.”

Certainly, some of Platten’s deepest and ferocious fights with herself found a way into the music of her new album I Am Rachel Platten, and especially on soul-baring songs such as “Mercy.”

“I wrote that song alone in my studio in the middle of the night crying out for mercy,” she recalls of the stirring song that now finds a home on Platten’s first studio album in seven years. “I was in so much pain from everything I’d gone through that I just couldn’t take anymore. The song came to me in 20 minutes or so, almost as if I was chasing it and it was already existing. It was sort of an answer in the moment — you might not be okay right now, but you will be someday.”

And that someday is today.

“There was meaning to what I was going through,” Platten says quietly.

She was reminded of that overall meaning this past October when she received the coveted Voice for Change award from the National Alliance of Mental Illness of New York City for her work advocating for mental health. 

“As a musician, you’re taught to strive for one kind of achievement, one kind of success, one kind of award — and we forget the very purpose of art is to transcend the art form,” she says. “It’s to impact people and to be rewarded for impacting people beyond just my industry. It’s almost bigger than I can grasp. [That award] means so much to me.”

It will also mean so much to Platten that she will have her husband Kevin Lazan and their two daughters — daughters Violet Skye, 5, and 3-year-old Sophie Jo — joining her in New York for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

“It’s a lot to come from the West Coast and then bring the kids into the city, but my husban is graciously going to do it,” Platten tells PEOPLE with a laugh. “I think my nieces and nephews are also coming, so it’s going to be really cute.”

Certainly, this year will feel far lighter than in year’s past.

“What else matters than our own ability to measure ourselves from the past to today?” Platten questions. “I think that’s the only marker we should ever compare ourselves to. It’s all about keeping it in perspective – from where I was to where I am now. It’s an important perspective shift, and I’m going to keep it in mind on Thanksgiving.”