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Shania Twain: 'I Had Moments of Sheer Desperation'

Parade.com
by Erin Hill
May 2, 2011

Shania Twain has inspired her fans over the years through her gifted songwriting, her story of survival after her mother and stepfather were tragically killed in a car accident, and more recently, her strength after her painful, public divorce and subsequent marriage to friend Frederic Thiebaud.

In her revealing new memoir, "From This Moment On," the 45-year-old star takes readers through the events that have made her who she is. In the excerpts below, Twain opens up about the impact of her mother and stepfather's abusive marriage and the devastation of her husband, rock producer Robert John "Mutt" Lange's affair.

On the devastating discovery, in March 2008, that her husband of 14 years was having an affair with her friend and confidante, Marie-Anne.
Twain describes it as "the most shocking and painful truth of my life since the death of my parents twenty years earlier....For the first week after finding out about the affair, I was ready to die--to go to bed forever and never wake up. Or to hurt someone. I was ready to do something desperate, but in reality, there was nothing to do but to suffer through it. Fortunately, when you're a mom, the responsibility of caring for your child can keep you going.

"Denial can have multiple layers, and rationalizing is common when you're trying to absorb something you just don't want to believe. I thought: Okay, so maybe they made a mistake. My husband and my friend will come to their senses and realize that. I was ready to forgive, and forget, make things right , move on, and get on with our lives. Not like nothing had happened, but like something had happened that I thought was fixable. But his was not to be.

"Despite everything, I still loved my husband. And I still loved my friend. I put myself in their shoes with the understanding that accidents happen, we're all human, and we all make mistakes....Eventually, I came to the point of accepting the end of my marriage."

How she came to fall in love with Frederic Thiebaud, the ex-husband of the friend who betrayed her.
"I describe what happened to Fred and me this way: we were two people who had been jettisoned from our lives as if we'd been shoved off the edge of a high cliff. Thankfully, we managed to grab onto each other on the way down in midair, and break each other's fall.

"I spent months shutting myself off from any thoughts of a relationship, but Fred loved me and was brave enough to come out and say it, even though I had made it clear that the thought of ever being in love again scared me out of my wits....It's true I swore I would never allow myself to love again, but Fred is impossible not to love.

"Three years after our hearts were broken, together, I feel more love now than any other emotion I've felt since that time. I consider myself the luckiest woman on the planet that I have Fred to share the rest of my life with."

Twain also describes the intense domestic violence and spousal abuse she witnessed as a child. In the book, she recalls one particular fight between her stepfather and mother.
"My mother was a featherweight and so easy to push around. Jerry had her on the bathroom floor by the toilet, and, grabbing her hair, he slammed her head against the side of the basin, knocking her out cold. I could see Jerry repeatedly plunge my mother's head into the toilet bowl, then pull it out again. I remember wondering, 'Why is he trying to drown her when she's already dead?' I wanted to scream, 'Stop, you already killed her!' I wanted to stop him, but I was too afraid...The enormity of that helplessness transferred to me, and I felt as limp as she was."

Despite the violence, Twain says she felt "sorry" for her parents, and while she hated the violence, she "didn't hate them."
"The guilt and shame they clearly felt after each incident, I sensed, weighed a ton; knowing us kids were watching must have been awful. I felt sorry for their shame and didn't have the heart to hold it against them even at that very young age. Each time, I just wanted it to be over, behind us and forgotten."

Twain rose to fame in the early 1990s with her debut album. She describes the difficulty in dealing with her newfound celebrity, loss of privacy, and pressure to live up to the public's expectations.
"I had moments of sheer desperation over these years, and although I never contemplated suicide, I was looking for an escape. I wished for an illness that might force me in the hospital so I could rest, or for the album suddenly to lose steam to it would be time to get off the road and pass my hours with my guitar just writing in peace with a few friends around a fire."

"From This Moment On" is available May 3, 2011. Shania Twain will appear on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" on Tuesday, May 3. Her docu-series on OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network will debut on May 8.

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