Shania Twain has spoken before about surviving abuse, but her latest account focuses on how unpredictable violence shaped daily life inside her childhood home.
During the July 30 episode of NPR’s Wild Card With Rachel Martin, the 60-year-old singer described growing up in Ontario, Canada, with her mother, Sharon, and adoptive father, Jerry Twain.
Twain said the couple’s volatile relationship frequently became physical.
She also confirmed that the violence extended to her and her sisters, Jill and Carrie Ann.
Twain Says She and Her Sisters Were Also Harmed
“They loved each other,” Twain said of Sharon and Jerry. “They went through so many ups and downs together, but they fought a lot, and they got violent often.” When Rachel Martin asked whether the children were also subjected to physical violence, Twain answered, “Yeah, with me too.”
She said simply being in the wrong place during an outburst could make one of the children a target. “Both my parents were pretty harsh physically,” Twain said. “We definitely got smacked around a lot, and kicked around sometimes, literally kicked around.”
Twain said the most severe violence occurred between her parents. She remembered her mother suffering bruising to her face and losing clumps of hair during their confrontations.
“It was very violent,” she said. “It was pretty bad sometimes. I mean, our house would shake. Those walls would shake.” She compared the noise, unpredictability and fear inside the home to a severe storm. “It’s very traumatic,” Twain said. “It gets loud and scary, like a really bad thunderstorm.”
Her Mother Repeatedly Tried to Leave
Twain said Sharon made several attempts to remove the children from the violent household, but none produced a permanent separation. “My mother did often try to leave,” she said. “She did leave, we did leave, but he’d always find us, or she’d always give in and go back.”
Twain now recognizes the repeated departures and returns as part of an abuse cycle. “It was a cycle,” she said. The singer provided a more extensive account of her childhood in her 2011 memoir, From This Moment On. In the book, she alleged that Jerry subjected her to physical, emotional and sexual abuse.
Twain also described intervening during one especially violent attack on her mother. She recalled striking Jerry with a chair before he punched her in the jaw, prompting her to hit him back. She has previously said she persuaded her mother to take the children to a shelter in Toronto. That departure was temporary, and the family eventually returned to Jerry.
Her Relationship With Her Mother Was Complicated
Twain began performing in bars at age 8. Because she was underage, she could enter only after alcohol service had ended, singing after midnight for miners, lumberjacks, fishermen and other remaining customers. Sharon drove her to performances and served as her manager, agent and coach despite having no musical training of her own.
Twain said her mother believed she could become a country star and often compared her with Tanya Tucker, who had achieved fame as a teenager. That memory inspired the title track of Twain’s seventh studio album, Little Miss Twain, which features Tucker and was released July 24.
“I never did become a child star, I wouldn’t be successful till long after my mother was already gone, but I was thinking about her when I wrote that song,” Twain told People. She described the recording as an opportunity to revisit the years when she was “Little Miss Twain” carrying a guitar that appeared enormous beside her.
Poverty Added to the Instability at Home
Twain has also described growing up without enough money for food, heat and household bills. She said she assumed adult responsibilities early, helping younger children get to school and creating meals from whatever remained in the kitchen. At times, that meant eating sandwiches made with ketchup or other leftover condiments.
Sharon struggled with depression and the pressure of being unable to provide consistently for the family. Twain said music offered her mother hope that her daughter’s talent might eventually change their circumstances.
“She was a wonderful mother, but she couldn’t cope with not always being able to care for us the way she believed we should be cared for,” Twain said.
Her Parents’ Deaths Forced Her Into a Caregiver Role
Sharon and Jerry died in a car crash in 1987, when Twain was 22 and beginning to pursue music professionally. Twain returned home and assumed responsibility for her three younger siblings. She took a performing job at the Deerhurst Resort in Huntsville, Ontario, helping keep the family together before eventually resuming the path that led her to Nashville.
Little Miss Twain revisits the period from her earliest bar performances through the record deal she secured in her late 20s. Twain said the album fills in a chapter of her life that she had rarely explored in her songwriting. “My music was her lifeline a lot of the time,” Twain said of her mother. “It gave her hope that we could maybe become the Beverly Hillbillies.”
