Though she's a country icon today, Shania Twain's early years were very difficult for the future singer. Twain endured both physical and sexual abuse at the hands of her stepfather as well as childhood poverty
"I developed a little broken, I think," Twain said via Fox News. She reflected on playing at bars as an eight-year-old. "I loved what I was doing, I mean, I loved music, so I was torn. I had this passion for music and I thought, 'Well, I guess this is, if you have a passion for music, this is the way you do it.'"
She said that her stepfather Jerry Twain was a terror growing up. The police would often come out to their home when he got into one of his rages.
"They would get violent. It would be a fight, which was very dangerous and very traumatic for everybody in the house. It was not unusual to have the police show up at the door in the middle of the night. So, yeah! A lot of mixed feelings about my mother wanting to have the next Tanya Tucker!" Twain said.
Twain also said that Jerry sexually abused her growing up. It left her with "this cringey horrible wanting to escape being in my own skin."
"I hid myself. Because, oh my gosh, it was terrible - you didn't want to be a girl in my house," she said. "I would wear bras that were too small for me, and I'd wear two, play it down until there was nothing girl about me. Make it easier to go unnoticed."
Shania Twain Struggled To Have Food
According to Twain, the abuse started around the time she was 10. In order to escape her surroundings, Twain threw herself into writing music. She said, "Whenever I'm going through something difficult in my life, I tend to process those times through writing."
Meanwhile, Twain also had to deal with a lack of food in the house. The singer ended up eating moldy bread.
"It was an event in our house to have a grocery day," she said. "Sometimes two to three weeks would go by without groceries. We'd be down to moldy bread, whatever the absolute bare minimum would be. If there was only mustard in the fridge, we would just put mustard on the bread and take that to school."
"It's very hard to concentrate when your stomach's rumbling," Twain said. However, she refused to ask for help. "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."
As far as anger about her childhood, Twain said that she pushed it all into her music.
"I've been angry... but I've always been a very productive person," she said. "I don't think I've ever had anger issues."
"I don't take credit for overcoming anger. I don't even take credit for not holding a grudge. It's just part of my character. There were many times when I was a girl or a young woman and intimidated by a man... I didn't want to go to a bar and sing to a bunch of drunk men. But [even though] I was a child, I wasn't going to throw a tantrum," she added.
