Shania Twain has shared harrowing details about her difficult childhood growing up in a physically abusive and “very violent” home.
The Grammy-winning country singer, 60, was raised one of five children by her mother, Sharon Morrison, and stepfather, Jerry Twain, in Timmins, Ontario, Canada.
Speaking on Thursday’s episode of NPR’s Wild Card with Rachel Martin radio show, Twain recalled regularly witnessing her mother being abused by her stepfather.
“It was very violent. So my mom, you know, she would lose clumps of hair. She was bruised often in the face and … it was pretty bad sometimes. I mean, our house would shake. Those walls would shake,” she disclosed. “It’s very traumatic. It gets loud and scary, like a really bad thunderstorm.
“I mean, both my parents were pretty harsh physically,” Twain added, saying that while her parents “hurt each other the most,” the physical abuse would also extend to her and her siblings.
“We definitely got smacked around a lot, and kicked around sometimes, literally kicked around,” she revealed. “If I was standing in the wrong place at the wrong time, definitely.”
The “Man! I Feel Like A Woman!” artist said that her mother tried to leave her stepfather numerous times. “She did leave — we did leave — but he’d always find us, or she’d always give in and go back,” Twain said. “It was a cycle.”
Twain’s mother divorced her biological father, Clarence Edwards, when she was just two. Sharon later remarried when Twain was six, with her stepfather adopting her and her sisters, Jill and Carrie Ann. The two eventually welcomed Twain’s half-brother Mark and adopted Jerry’s nephew, Darryl, following the death of his mother.
Twain was just eight when she started singing in local bars and clubs to help earn money for her family. At 13, she performed on The Tommy Hunter Show.
She credited her mother with shuttling her to local gigs and helping her find opportunities to gain musical experience.
“She wanted to believe that this wasn’t it,” Twain recently told The Independent of her mother, “that there was more, so she was living vicariously through her dreams that I’d be the next Tanya Tucker. She wanted to see one of us break that cycle of the life we had.”
In 1987, Sharon and Jerry were killed in a head-on collision with a logging truck when Twain was 22. Their deaths forced Twain to abandon her burgeoning music career to raise her three youngest siblings, and it was only once they’d left home that she signed her first record deal, aged 27, in 1993. That year, she released her self-titled debut album, Shania Twain, followed by The Woman in Me (1995) and Come On Over (1997), which went on to become the best-selling country album of all time.
If you are a child and you need help because something has happened to you, you can call the NSPCC free of charge on 0800 1111. You can also call the NSPCC if you are an adult and you are worried about a child, on 0808 800 5000. The National Association for People Abused in Childhood (Napac) offers support for adults on 0808 801 0331
The national domestic abuse helpline offers support for women on 0808 2000 247, or you can visit the Refuge website. There is a dedicated men's advice line on 0808 8010 327. Those in the US can call the domestic violence hotline on 1-800-799-SAFE (7233)
Other international helplines can be found via www.befrienders.org
