Shania Twain revealed a remarkably upbeat setlist that she had thought she would never sing again in an interview with Billboard at the time of the planning and launch of her 2023 tour.
She had put a lot of effort into getting back to singing, and now she had a demanding schedule of daily practices while also overseeing everything from lighting to costumes.
Although she admitted, “My days are very long,” Twain was more than capable of taking on the challenge. She has already gone through the kind of sorrow and misery that would break many people.
And it all started when she was still quite young. Twain’s life has been anything but easy, from living in poverty as a child to combating the patriarchal attitudes of a male-dominated field.
Her triumphant album’s release and her subsequent return to the stage after a period that would have been a death sentence for most musicians are testaments to an unbreakable and iron will. Only a lifetime of suffering can lead to this kind.
Shania Twain experienced difficulties from the moment of her birth. She wrote about the physician giving her mother a cigarette in her autobiography, “From This Moment On.”. She broke the heartbreaking news that her daughter had passed away after a long and traumatic breech birth. The infant did eventually take a breath for the first time, which was against all odds.
Twain was her mother’s second child and the first with her husband Clarence Edwards. She was given the name Eilleen Regina Edwards at birth. Jill, Twain’s older sister, was born soon after their mother’s engagement ring was killed in a car accident, and she and Edwards’ union would not be a happy one.
When Twain’s parents divorced when she was a young child, she couldn’t help but wonder, despite her mother’s assurances that her father had asked him to cut all ties with the family.
She stated, “I was aware of his existence growing up.
“I questioned whether he thought about me and what he thought of me.”.
Twain was about to start kindergarten when her mother married the man she would eventually refer to as her father. Having “a bright, charming personality with a playful character and plenty of jokes and pranks up his sleeve,” she described Jerry Twain, an Ojibway Native. She recalled that, despite her praise for her stepfather’s virtues, even as a young child, she realized that her parents had a violent relationship.
Shania Twain has been incredibly transparent about how her family’s upbringing in abject poverty affected them. She shared personal anecdotes during her interview with Hoda Kotb on “Making Space with Hoda Kotb” about how challenging it was to grow up in Canada without access to items like warm clothing and waterproof boots, as well as what it was like to have to come up with an explanation for skipping lunch.
Despite her stepfather’s consistent employment in a string of fluctuating minimum-wage jobs, Twain claimed in her autobiography, “From This Moment On,” that the family’s ongoing financial struggles eventually escalated into physical violence.
She claimed that her stepfather once “slammed her [her mother’s] head against the side of the basin, knocking her out cold,” and that “it’s likely that my mother might have been nagging him about not having enough grocery money.”. Jerry was repeatedly placing and removing her mother’s head from the toilet bowl.
Twain and her sisters ran to the snow-covered porch and screamed as they did so, at which point the police were called. The fighting reportedly stopped when police arrived, and they said, “Until next time.”.
If you or someone you know is a victim of domestic violence, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at (800) 799-7233. Additionally, you can find more tools, data, and assistance on their website.
