If your account is configured correctly for Gmail you don't get to enter your password unless Google specifically decide you need to. Thunderbird does not hold your password for a correctly configured Gmail account.

Why did you delete your expiating account in Thunderbird? I can think of nothing you could have done that was less helpful to yourself or anyone trying to offer you support. I think you need to take the time to explain what prompted your behaviors because we need to work out what the original problem was that is now exacerbated by not having an account to work with.

Hi Matt, thanks for the reply. I was misremembering that Thunderbird stores passwords, but gmail is an oauth setup. When I couldn't change the password, I thought that I needed to delete and re-create the Thunderbird account. But actually the answer was that I needed to restart Thunderbird so that it would ask me to re-authorize Gmail. It was not giving me the ability to add a new password or re-authorize oauth, and restarting Thunderbird did fix that. thanks again.