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Shania Twain Reveals She Was Abused by Her Stepfather as a Child: “I Was Born to Be a Fighter”
Throughout her life, country star Shania Twain has endured some unimaginable personal situations. And, in a new [60 Minutes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?timecontinue=311&v=t7GfmCgjlKU)_ interview, the 52-year-old singer bravely opened up about surviving physical, verbal, and sexual abuse from her stepfather during her childhood.
"He just had issues — and, at the time I was looking at this man as somebody who was not being himself. It was like he was two people," Shania said, adding her stepfather often shouted "vulgarities" at her. The star's parents, Clarence Edwards and Sharon Morrison, divorced when she was young and her mother later remarried Jerry Twain who became abusive to both Shania and her mother. "I would get physically involved sometimes with my parents fights because I just thought that he would kill [my mom]. One of these times, he's going to kill her," the singer recently revealed.
In her 2001 memoir, From This Moment On, Shania similarly opened up about Jerry's abuse and recalled a particular incident where her stepfather beat her mother unconscious and continued to smash her head into a toilet. "I ran up behind my dad with a chair in both hands and smashed it across his back," she wrote. "Before I could get away, he punched me in the jaw. Adrenaline pumping, I punched him back!"
When Shania was 22 years old — and her music career was just beginning — her parents were both killed in a car accident and the aspiring star had to help raise her younger siblings. "At that point in my life, I would have rather gone with them. It was like, 'This is way too much to handle,'" Shania said during her 60 Minutes interview. "[But] I was born to be a fighter and a survivor."
Today, Shania has made a triumphant return to the spotlight after a 15-year career hiatus. "There’s so many challenges in coming back to something you haven’t done in a long time. I’m not about to give up now!" she recently confessed. "I felt like I had climbed a huge mountain and was standing on top of it, looking God in the eye, and saying, 'I’m here! What do I gotta do next?'"
