EXCLUSIVE: Shania Twain Reveals Childhood Trauma and Heartbreak Behind Her Success

Shania Twain's accolades are many. Since the 1995 release of her chart-topping breakout album The Woman in Me, the 60-year-old singer has won five Grammys, five ACM Awards, two CMA Awards and scored 16 top ten hits, RadarOnline.com can reveal.

And, with more than 85 million records sold worldwide, she remains the best-selling female country artist of all time. She's also regularly hailed as an icon by fellow musicians including Taylor Swift, Harry Styles – she was his opening act for his 12-night Together, Together residency at London's Wembley Stadium this summer – Kacey Musgraves and Post Malone.

As many fans know, her road to success was far from easy. She began performing in smoky dive bars at the tender age of eight in her hometown of Timmins, Ontario, in Canada, pushed by her parents to help earn money for groceries and gas for her family.

At 22, her mom and stepfather were killed in a head-on car crash, leaving her to care for her three younger siblings.

"Everyone knows Shania's youth was no picnic," a source told RadarOnline.com. Now, she's opening up like never before on her new album, Little Miss Twain.

"She wanted to put it all out there," the source revealed. "Shania's a positive person by nature and she tries not to dwell on the past, but she's only human. She's been through a lot, and it's left her with some serious scars."

As a child, Twain didn't enjoy performing live, but her mom was insistent, often dragging her out of bed for late-night shows at local bars after last call, when children were allowed in. "My mother really wanted me to be on the stage," the Man, I Feel Like a Woman singer recently told The New York Times. "So she got me up there very, very young. Too young."

A tomboy, she was more interested in playing football with her brothers than getting on stage, telling a family friend she wanted to be "a man" when she grew up.

Perhaps that was a reaction to the violence in her household; she's described being touched inappropriately by a neighbor and witnessed her stepfather smash her mother's head against a toilet and try to drown her.

After their 1987 deaths, she was left to care for her siblings, returning home from Toronto where she'd been trying to build a singing career.

"I fell apart, totally," she said during a 2023 appearance on the Making Space with Hoda Kotb podcast. "I lost a very important foundation."

She's now worth a reported $400 million, but much of her life was defined by poverty – and it became a driving force in her success. "There were really difficult days," said the source. In Twain's 2011 memoir, From This Moment On, she revealed they were too poor to afford shampoo, and would eat a "goulash" of boiled milk, bread and sugar.

"It taught her the value of money and the importance of working hard and investing wisely," says the source.

Even after she found stardom, there was more heartache: She divorced her husband of 14 years, Robert "Mutt" Lange, in 2008 after discovering his affair with her close friend Marie-Anne Thiébaud. (Twain and Mutt share son Eja, 24.)