Shania Twain is one of country music's most famous faces with a ton of hits and shiny
prizes to show for them.
Twain has sold more than 85 million albums and boasts some of the most memorable anthems
of the genre.
But behind all the success, Twain has suffered a mountain of tragedy and heartbreak in her
lifetime.
Here's what you may not know about Shania Twain's life away from the microphone.
Humble beginnings
Shania Twain might live a life filled with fame and fortune now, but she grew up in poverty.
In an interview with Rolling Stone, Twain remembered being jealous of her schoolmates
who had more nutritious lunches because she was usually sent with nothing but a slice
of bread to eat.
She said, "I don't regret my childhood.
Learning to make mustard sandwiches was something just to get me through the embarrassment,
to help me avoid humiliation.
I would certainly never have humiliated myself enough to reach out and ask for help and say,
'You know, I'm hungry.
Can I have that apple that you're not going to eat?'
I didn't have the courage to do that."
She also claims to have only feared that her teachers would discover how bad off her family
was and that she'd be taken away.
All these years later, her plate is full, but Twain makes a point of helping those kids
who might be suffering similar experiences as she did.
In 2014, she launched Shania Kids Can Charity Foundation.
It's a program that identifies kids in need for various reasons and provides discreet
assistance, giving lunches to children in need, paying field trip expenses, and fulfilling
hygiene, clothing, and other educational needs, too.
Turbulent home life
In addition to being poor as a kid, Twain also revealed that she was traumatized by
things she witnessed in her childhood.
Not only that, but she said that she was abused by her stepfather, Jerry Twain.
But she wasn't the only person to experience her step father's wrath — Twain's own mother
Sharon took the brunt of his anger.
She told ABC in 2011, "[It was] overwhelming for any child to never know what to expect
from one day to the next.
It could happen anytime.
But also you don't know if they're going to survive it."
She recalled one particular moment where Jerry nearly drowned her mother in a toilet bowl
and thought he'd killed her in front of them.
Twain said she went into shock at the thought of her mother dying.
But the abuse left Twain confused for multiple reasons.
She had both love and fear for the man who raised her and is still conflicted about how
to feel about their past.
Meanwhile, her relationship with her mother had also been strained growing up.
Perhaps due to the traumas of her home, Twain said her mother often isolated herself when
she was a child.
Witnessing the turmoil as a young kid, Twain penned her first song about her mother, called
"Mama Won't You Come Out to Play."
She explained on Good Morning America: "My mother was always… very isolating of herself.
I don't still really understand why.
She's not alive anymore for me to ask her.
I wish I could, but she was always that person that was watching life happen from inside
through a window."
Unexpected goodbyes
Tragedy would strike the Twain household in November 1987 when both of her parents were
killed in a car accident.
The couple was reportedly heading to a job site when a truck carrying timber crossed
into their lane and collided with them head on.
"And come face to face with the fragility of life and how fleeting it can be, then you
realize nothing else matters."
Faced with a crisis, Twain stepped up to the plate to care for her two teenage brothers
and sister, leaving her budding music career behind.
She would eventually return once her siblings were grown up, of course, but it would take
almost a decade for her to fully arrive as a result of the personal setback.
Major betrayal
Twain was married to Robert "Mutt" Lange for over a decade before their union began to
unravel in 2008.
Lange, who'd been her spouse, the father of her son, and her long-time manager, reportedly
confessed to cheating and falling in love with Twain's best friend and personal assistant
Marie-Anne Thiebaud.
"She was my confidante.
Somebody who understood what my concerns were in my marriage."
After the affair came to light, Twain wrote her former friend Marie-Anne a letter to ask
why she stole her husband with, "Why are you torturing me?
Let it go, please.
Find love somewhere else from someone else."
"That was humiliating at that moment for me I was like 'Haa!
I've spent so many years trying to hide so many things and now all of a sudden how can
this happen and I was very angry about that"
The pair's divorce was finalized in 2010, but her relationship drama was not quite done
yet.
Getting even
Through her devastating break up, only one person could relate to the pain Twain was
experiencing — Marie-Anne Thiebaud's own husband, Frederic Thiebaud.
"It was terrible.
She was heartbroken.
She was really really heartbroken."
Through the drama, he and Twain would bond and eventually form an unexpected romance
of their own.
In 2009, just over a year after her marriage fell apart, Twain let fans know through her
own personal blog that her love life was beginning to take shape once again.
Twain said of Frederic,
"Having gone through the suffering of his family splitting apart at the same time and
under the same extreme circumstances, he understands me better than anyone…
We leaned on one another through the ups and downs, taking turns holding each other up.
We've become stronger and closer through it all, as have our children."
In 2011, Twain and her new man would make their love official by tying the knot in Puerto
Rico.
Dealing with dysphonia
In the midst of her separation from her first husband, Twain also lost something else that
was very important to her— her voice.
That sweet sounding country tone millions of fans had grown to love was in jeopardy
after she was diagnosed with dysphonia, in connection with Lyme Disease.
It's a condition that causes muscles to squeeze the voice, and Twain feared she might never
sing again.
The process of recovery was long and hard, and her tones have forever changed in the
process.
She told Rolling Stone, "I'm a different singer now.
There was a lot of coming to terms with that.
It's been one of the obstacles in my life I've just had to learn to live with."
Starting over
In 2017, Twain announced that she was releasing new music after 15 years of absence from the
airwaves.
She told Fox News of her decision to reenter the studio, saying,
"Right from the beginning, I was not going to collaborate with anybody for this one.
This needed to be an independent experience.
I hadn’t written by myself for a long time.
I was married for 14 years to my collaborator, and I really just needed to do that again."
Of course, her history will have an impact on her lyrics, as the song "Who's Gonna Be
Your Girl" is a ballad about the end of her lengthy marriage.
As she told Rolling Stone, "It's about feeling unappreciated and knowing that you are secondary.
Having to live with someone that has different priorities and accepting that you're not the
most important thing in a person's life."
So, after all she's been through over the years, the silver lining is that she's got
plenty of personal inspiration to work from nowadays.
The Twain train isn't set to stop rolling anytime soon.
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