Wild Card with Rachel Martin - Shania Twain

Episode Date: July 30, 2026

“You cannot rely on somebody else to push you out of the plane — you have to jump,” Shania Twain tells Rachel. For someone who has lived a life marked by so much loss and profound success, she has a lot to reflect on and is doing so the best way she knows how: through music. Her new album is called “Little Miss Twain.” She talks to Rachel about her difficult childhood and rediscovering her voice.To listen sponsor-free and support the show, sign up for Wild Card+ at plus.npr.org/wildcard See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

Is there anything in your life that has felt predestined? I think I was definitely destined to be an artist, performer, on a very big scale. And why I say it was destined is because it would not have been my choice as a child. I'm Rachel Martin, and this is Wildcard. The show where Cards Control the Conversation. It is tempting to look to the past to introduce Shania Twain. back to her huge breakout album Come On Over in 1997

with songs like, man, I feel like a woman, and you're still the one. That album turned her into one of country music's biggest stars. But looking back, it just doesn't feel right. For an artist, who, to me, has been defined by her ability to overcome all kinds of loss and keep moving forward on our own terms.

Her new album is called Little Miss Twain, and I am so very happy to welcome Shania Twain to Wildcard. Hello! This is fun. Let's play. First round is memories, Shania. I'm going to hold up three cards. You pick randomly. Okay?

One, two, or three? We'll go with two. Two. What was a moment when you felt proud of yourself as a kid? I would say that when I learned how to drive. Really? Yep. Because I worked with my dad.

And I was his little helper. and I learned how to drive the back roads at 10 years old. And he was, did he have a logging business? No. Tree planting. Tree planting. The other way around. The other way around.

The tree adjacent. That's right. Tree planting. The better version. We were planting the trees. I was very proud of myself to be able to manage to drive. Yeah. And it's a powerful machine.

It's a lot of responsibility. Right. And you're working. You're helping. out, you're contributing, you know, you're, you feel grown up. What did it look like? Was it very foresty where you grew up? Oh, very, very dense forest where I grew up in northern Ontario, very dense, dense, um, mostly spruce and pine trees, like mostly evergreens.

Yeah. And the dirt roads were our working roads and also, So, you know, we hunted a lot. So if I was driving, then my dad could, you know, look out for moose. Oh. And especially at night, that was... Did you do that at night? Often at night, because you can see the eyes.

And, yeah, so I would drive and he would scout. Did you help, like, bring the animal in and... carry it in the back of the truck. Yeah, I mean, I come from a hunting fishing family, and I learned all about all of that sort of stuff. And now I'm a vegetarian. What do you know? Are there two related?

No, but it's just, it's funny how life evolves and how you go from being, really you're living in your parents' world, in your parents' life, your families. culture and traditions to evolving into your own person. Making their own choices. Yeah. But yes, we did a lot of that.

My dad, I was adopted into a native family. Adubue. Yep. Ojibwe. Yep. So they were able to hunt off-season and, I guess, something. In the dark. Are those fond memories for you?

Yeah, they are fond memories. You know, I was, I felt quite, you know, I was, my brothers were younger, so I was the only girl that was really interested in nature and being out in the wilderness. And so I was kind of like the boy in the family, you know, the one that was old enough to help my dad. Okay. We're going to move to the next three. one, two or three. One. One.

Okay. That was easy. Where would you go when you wanted to feel safe as a kid? Where I would go when I wanted to feel safe was out in the wilderness. That's my happy place, nature. Out in nature. Down by the river. Down by the lake.

Under the trees. Was there a particular place? Do you remember? If it was nighttime, I would just go behind the house where the bushes were there and sit there with my guitar and just in the dark. And everything was, our backyards are very bushy. They're very woodsy and lots of trees and they're very wild. So I would just sit out there. But, you know, most of the time I would find a river.

That was my, I was always happiest when I was near the river. And, I mean, you have talked before about your family. Your family's complicated. You've had a lot of loss. Your parents died in a car accident and 87 when you were only 22. But even growing up, I mean, it wasn't necessarily a safe place all the time, Shania. Yeah, my parents had a very volatile relationship. They loved each other.

they were, they went through so many ups and downs together, but they fought a lot, and they got violent often. So, with you ever? Yeah, with me too. If I was standing in the wrong place at the wrong time, definitely.

I mean, both my parents were pretty harsh physically. and yeah, we definitely got smacked around a lot and kicked around sometimes, literally kicked around. But they hurt each other the most. It was very violent. So my mom, you know, she would lose clumps of hair. She was bruised often in the face. Yeah, it was pretty bad sometimes. I mean, our house would shake.

those walls would shake. Mind you, they weren't built very strongly either. Yeah. Yeah, it's a very, it's very traumatic. It gets loud and scary, and it's, you know, like a really bad thunderstorm. It's a lot of pressure on any young person who is in an abusive home, but especially when you're, you've got younger siblings and your mom, I imagine a lot of the time just wasn't emotionally capable to just do things like put dinner on the table because things were bad. So you had to step up in that kind of maternal role very early.

Well, there were two sides of things. There was the fact that we were poor and we didn't always have the money to get groceries, right? So now we're living on or we're trying to stretch out whatever we've got left. When we ran out of everything else, we could always crumble, stale bread. and we would freeze milk, so that was good. Okay. And when we ran out of fresh milk, we would thaw that milk, and then we would make what we called goulash,

which was we would boil the milk, pour it over dried bread, and then add like a bit of brown sugar. And it was actually really delicious. It's like a cereal. It sort of is. It's a carb and it's sugar. Right. It's a poor man's cereal.

A poor man's porridge is if porridge wasn't already a poor man's food. But you know what? It filled the spot and it tied us over sometimes for like days. So that was good. That was a good go-to. We were always collecting our stale bread. Never throw out. Never throw out your stale bread.

You can always make goulash. Yes. So that was one of the reasons why they would fight because the tensions. would get high. My mother would get depressed because she couldn't, you know, they weren't providing for us. She would go to bed sometimes for days and just sleep through it. And now we're just sort of fending for ourselves. Or they would just argue over can't pay the bills. Now we're going to run out of heat. And now whose fault is that? That's a very cold.

Exactly. It's critical, right? It gets really, really, really cold. I know. It's complicated why people stay or go or not, but did she ever try to leave? Yeah, my mother did often try to leave. She did leave. We did leave. But, you know, he'd always find us or she'd always give in and go back. It was a cycle. They would reach a peak of real... dangerous violence and then, you know, the police would come and to the door or the neighbors would call the cops and they would come and break things up, but that would normally get my mother to go, okay, this is it. We got a, like one of us is going to die or, you know, so we got a, we get an escape and we would leave when he wasn't around, otherwise he would have stopped

stopped her and stopped us. And then, you know, once I reached the age of 13, I'm just like, okay, now I've had enough. And I convinced my mom to leave to the city, which was a long drive away. And that way we could hide for a lot longer and hopefully really break this cycle for good. And it did. It worked. But forgive me that I don't know this point in your biography, but it seems important. then somehow they're in a car together when they died.

Right. So we make it through a year and a half and she goes back. But this year and a half was a huge, huge break in both their psyche. Because we stayed in a sheltered, like battered woman's shelter. And my mother went through this real, a new education. They reeducated her. They got her a job. They got us into like protected residency where you couldn't find us and really taught her how to not go back safely and to manage on our own with, you know, assistance, of course.

Yeah. And then my dad at the same time just, I think. think just woke up too. And they did get back together, but they never physically fought again. Wow. That is really extraordinary. It worked. And they ended up working together, building up their business, not to the point where they could ever buy a new vehicle or anything like that, but they were really doing well. They were feeding us. Yeah.

We weren't, we were no longer poor. We were just working class. Yeah. And then they die in a car crash together. It's just the craziest. I always thought they would kill each other. And then they end up dying together in a crash. It's the, it really is hard still for me to get my head around.

Oh, it's so much. It's a movie in itself. How these two people, it's like how these two people went through all of this in a very like turbulent way. Yeah. And then work it out, their stability, and then they die. And then now all those kids are unstable again, all over again. Yeah. Start from scratch.

So we started that question asking about your safe space, the river. I imagine you went there a lot. That's it. I went to the river a lot. It was so great. And I felt so comfortable and safe. So when you said your safe space,

I feel so safe in nature. Yeah. That's my comfort place. Thank you for all that. Last one in this round. One, two, or three. Three. Three.

What's something someone told you that changed your trajectory? Well, I've always admired people that see the positive side. And I had a friend that was a working mom. She was smart, successful, and hardworking, a great mother. and then prematurely died from a brain aneurysm. And her saying was always, you know, two things. Pack your own parachute and, you know, make lemon out of lemonade's.

And, no, make lemonade out of lemons. How does the saying go? Make lemonade out of... When life hands you lemons, make lemonade. That's it. Yes, you got to make the lemonade. And this always appealed to my younger self. And I realized, well, this is actually, without me knowing how to put it into words when I was a kid, this attitude is what has gotten me through everything without being angry about it and without being resentful and being actually being grateful for the bumpy upbringing and the challenges and the hurdles. So that was Patty Lou.

Patty Lou always said those two things to me when things got tough. And I thought, wow, you are appealing to my own sense of optimism right there. It is optimistic. It also feels a little bit gritty and realistic, the parachute part. That's it. Take it on yourself. Like find the joy, find the joy, gratitude, etc. And it's up to you. But also be ready to take care of yourself.

That's it. And be ready to jump out of the plane if you need to, if it's safer outside the plane. Independent thinking is the most crucial gift you can give yourself. It's everything. You have to make independent choices. You have to make brave choices. You cannot rely on somebody else to push you out of the plane. You have to, yes, you know.

You have to jump. Get ready because it's up to you. Survival is up to you. Isn't it though? Yeah. Well, I mean, there are a lot of things that are out of our control. And that is where the lemonade comes in. Exactly.

Exactly. Exactly. You wash down that sorrow and hardship with a nice, cold glass of lemonade. That's it. That's where the lemonade comes in. Before we start round two, let's talk about Little Miss Twain. Congratulations. Thank you. I said in the intro that you, to me, have always seemed like a woman who's, you're moving forward. Like, there's a choice. You could situate yourself in the back room, view, mirror, but you don't.

You're moving, moving, moving. This album, you're intentionally looking backwards. Are you, is that just kind of where you're situated in your life? life right now that you feel maybe things are at a point where you can, where it's safe and happy and joyful to look back? I'm just at a point now where there's two reasons why I've written this album, Little Miss Twain. Little Miss Twain is a reflection on the person I still am, but where she started to get to where I am now. And, I was eight years old when I started on the stage. That's just wild.

We should say, I mean, your mom was your biggest fan, for better or for worse. She was my manager, my coach, terrible vocal coach. She smoked. She was like a chain smoker. And she practically lived on coffee and cigarettes and couldn't hold a tune. But she would always be there to, you know, encourage me and and push. You know, she took it very seriously.

It's like, okay. She was going to make a professional out of me as early as possible. So I was on the stage. I had audiences. I was a little girl singing adult songs and entertaining adults, mostly intoxicated adults.

And that little girl was introduced often because I was the only child in those environments most of the time ladies and gentlemen welcome to the stage Little Miss Twain So that's how I was often introduced

And that's why That is where the title of the song came from And I was For years Putting a lot of my stories A lot of those stories into music but never considered making an album with those songs till now. And now is because the collection built up.

It was like, wow, I actually have an album's worth of music here that are all themed around the environment I grew up in. And like singing about the river, singing about the snow and the winters. And, you know, I come from a gold mining town. and that's what made our town, you know, the gold mining and the woods, the timber, the industry of planting the trees and the smell of the trees and all of those things. So the album is very descriptive in a lot of ways. And it's a lot of me as a child looking forward into where I want to go as well. It's me like dreaming, okay. someday, I'm going to ride horses on a beach. You know, I'm going to be able to ride and be in the sun.

But that was a thing that struck me is that you loved horses as a young girl, still probably do. And you had this dream. And that's how you fantasized about adulthood. It was like riding horses on a beach. But your mom had a very different idea of what your adulthood. was going to look like. And her dream won out. I mean, you made it, lady. But in the beginning, were you on board with that? Or were you just like, what am I doing, Mom? I don't want to do this. Yeah. No, I did not want to be in the bars when I was eight years old. I did not want to get out of

bed at midnight to go to the bar because that was the only legal time I could go in to perform. So I sang in the last, you know, hour or two of the night. Wait, why was it legal for you to go at midnight? So when the bars closed, the actual, like, service bar, then I was allowed in. And then I went, yeah, exactly. But at the age of 11, I had a proper license to go in legally and sing before the bar is closed. So now I'm 11, and I'm a professional, like a bona fide, you know, professional. But from 8 to 11, I could only go in after midnight and perform.

So it wasn't fun. I mean, I didn't want to, you know, singing a smoky bar. It was just, you know, air that you choke on. But could you see the end that your mom had articulated for you? I mean, it's in the song. It's in the song, Lil Miss Twain. It's so lovely. I mean, honey, you're going to go far.

according to my mother, I'm the next Tanya Tucker. I'm going to be a star. Exactly. But so that's her perspective and her dream. But my mother was always saying, you are talented. You could be the next Tanya Tucker. This is our goal. So come on, honey.

Push that Chevy. We got to get to the bar and you've got to get up on that stage. and, you know, entertain, learn how to be an entertainer. Right. And I would be 30 when I had my first top 10 hit. So at 30 when I had my first top 10 hit, my gift to myself was a horse. So see, my dream came true to. I wanted to ask about your voice.

I mean, some people will know you've been on a journey with it. it's so powerful on this album. I just, there are a couple of songs that I'm just like, oh, that's so good. I'd be loving me. I love that one. I love that track. Thank you. And I wonder how you hear your voice, because it has changed.

You had, it's a long story, but basically you got Lyme disease a long time ago. And as a result of that, you had all these voice problems and had to have several, at least two throat surgeries. and then you had to take like a decade off of singing and performing while you got it back. And I just wonder now, like, as you make all this new music, how do you hear your voice when you listen back to it? What I hear is a voice that projects and regardless of its sound, because I know like, ah, I've got this little fry in here. I'm always like, it's always frying out, but I don't mind. I've embraced it. And when I sing now, it's got more body and just texture. Life. I hear it is like more. It's like a reflection of your life. It is. It is. It's got lots of texture. To say the least. Yes.

Yep. It's got a lot of, it's got a lot of, what would you say, character. Yeah. It's got a lot of character. It's lived. And yeah, so I have two crutches in there that regulates the induction of the vocal cords, and that is what gives me the stability. Truly? There are things in there that help? Two Gortex crutches. Wow. Yep, two Gortex panels. Yep. Oh, my gosh.

It was tough. even the physical recover because it was Oh, I imagine. Yeah, they literally open your throat. Yeah. And they... It's intense.

Push over your larynx. And then they insert one, and then they do the other one. And then while you're open throat and you have to be awake. No. Yeah. Because you have to speak and sing and make sounds.

Oh my God, that is crazy. I know. It's crazy, but it's like, listen, at least it wasn't my heart. Like, people have to do that when they get heart for surgeries. So, like, I have to look at things. Listen, this is where I learn. This is where I make lemonade.

That's right. Okay. Yeah, we're making it. And making the decision to have the procedure done, it was either that or never sing again. That was the parachute. Totally. That was the jump.

Next round is Insights. Shania, three new cards. One, two, or three. What do you feel in? One. What has age taught you about love? Oh. Well, it's taught me a lot about myself.

Because I actually look in the mirror now all the time. So it was like, the more I age, the more I just look in the mirror. Because I just got so tired. even in my youth of like avoiding the mirror, avoiding looking at myself. And I mean, when I was younger, I had a killer body. I had great skin, the perfect shape. I had it all, it was all great. It was something to one that I should have been able to look at.

I mean, you sort of do now. If I'm being honest. Well, now I look at myself and go, you look great, even if you're older. You look older. Like, don't kid yourself. You look older. Your skin is sagging. You've got little bumps and lumps and dense and shadows, but it's only going to get worse.

So enjoy it right now for the way it looks right now and then evolve with it. I mean, it's like if I would have done that all along, I wouldn't have been so shocked the day I opened my eyes and went, Oh my gosh, what happened to my body? Like, it's all falling apart. I think just with age I've learned, grow with yourself, be honest with yourself, be transparent, and face yourself. So you don't get shocked. So I hear you. The question was, what has age taught you about love?

It sounds like your answer to that. I don't want to put roots in your mouth, but it's the... It's about loving yourself. Love yourself the way you are. And then leave the rest of fashion and makeup and all of that is, you know, the rest is all, that's the fun part. But the love, you have to be, you have to love yourself naked. Next three. Three.

One, two, or three. Oh, three. You got it. You know. Shania Twain, are you good at releasing control? I'm very good at releasing control. I love delegating. Yep. Yep. I love to delegate. Now, I like to set my boundaries of what's my zone, like the kitchen. Okay. I go, okay, nobody comes past this point or this point. This is my little work zone, and this is the part I'm going to do. And everybody else can contribute. We can all play together. We can all cook together.

and I'm not going to helicopter over how you chop the onions, and I'm not going to like micromanage the way you peel the potatoes. But there's a zone and there's a part that I've got to do myself. What in the songwriting, in the crux of your work as a creative person, what is your zone? That you're like, this is mine. Don't, I will take your opinion and your contributions all over here, but right here is me.

Like, what is your kitchen? For me, as a songwriter especially, or in any creative element, I already have a vision when I walk into something. And whether it's melody, lyrics, just the direction of something, otherwise, let's play, let's be a team and work from there.

You know, so... Did that take a while? Like when you were, when you were, coming up, were there a lot of cooks in your kitchen to extend the metaphor? Like, did a lot of people want to create you? I mean, you would prove in yourself, but then I imagine you get up and record labels and executives and everyone's got an opinion about Shania Twain now. I got signed in my late 20s. So as I was a kid on stage from the age of eight years old in writing all those years, I was pretty established in my skills as a writer and as a performer.

So it didn't take long. It was really the first, very first album, Shania Twain, I didn't impose my own vision too much. I already understood with that maturity that in my late 20s that, okay, you're new in town. You've got to be smart about this. You can't just get kicked out of down by being a control freak, right? But as soon as I'd made that first video,

that was my own... I was right in that first video, and I was co-directing that video, and I styled it myself. And the label's like, okay, here's more control. And before I knew it, I was picking my own team.

And so when you pick your own team, now you're choosing people that you trust and who's talent that you admire. And now you're good to delegate. Because you've chosen them for what they do. Last one in this round. One, two, or three. One. One.

What was a disappointing experience that now feels? like a blessing. Okay. A disappointing experience was the letdown in my marriage. And the blessing was my new husband, my new love. And just... Oh, yeah. That's a big one. Yeah, because I went from the reason it's a blessing more than anything, and it's not, you know, not to... The men were important in those roles of this lesson and this blessing. But, more importantly, I said to myself, never love again. No way, no more men, no more love, just focus on being a mom. That's all you need to be is a mom.

And allowing myself to go from allowing myself the prerogative to change. change my heart and my mind and recognize that there was an opportunity for love that if I was an idiot, I would ignore by being stubborn. We have to give some context to people who don't know the story. Your, how do we say this tonight? Well, so I could say, so my best friend and my ex-husband cheated on me. and together. And, yeah, I guess it's the ultimate They got together.

And then she got together. She got divorced. Yeah, from her husband. She got divorced from her husband. So that was the double blessing. So her husband and I were pushed out of the bus. I always say it this way. We were pushed out of a moving bus by our ex-exam.

spouses and we tumbled for quite a long time, getting bumped around. And then we just, when we stopped rolling, we landed in each other's arms and it was like, wow, well, that's behind us. We have each other. We understand each other. Let's brush each other off and move on with this wonderful new recognition of who each other is. What a surprise. What a lovely plot twist. Well, especially because, you know, sometimes, you know, you hear a lot of stories in life where, you know, you've maybe grown up with somebody or you worked with somebody or you were neighbors. But for years you were in each other's life, but not, you didn't really know each other. And you didn't see each other as someone that would be a partner.

Yeah, right. You just saw them as your good neighbor. You just saw them as your... Also, because you weren't looking. You weren't looking. We weren't looking. We were faithful. We weren't looking.

So when we came out of this tumble, this very rough tumble. Yeah. It's sort of like you look at that person now, and you're going, wow, you were there all this time? And I didn't even see you. It's that thing. It's like the person that was there the whole time. Yeah. And that you just didn't see as a love.

So it was so wonderful. So that's the blessing. Oh my gosh. That's a great disappointment blessing story. Isn't it? I'm sorry. Well, it's just awful. What happened.

Right? I'm so glad. Right? Like who kicks you off your own bus? Yes. That's it, right? It's like we started on the bus as four. You know what I'm saying?

And then we got kicked off the bus while it was still moving. Yeah. But we landed. It was a shit landing, but that's how we found each other. Okay, last round. Beliefs. One, two or three. Two.

Two. Is there anything in your life that has felt predestined? Is that an idea that resonates with you? Yes, it does. I think I was definitely destined to be an artist, performer, on a very big scale. And why I say it was destined is because it would not have been my choice as a child. That wasn't the goal. I just wanted to make music in my bedroom.

I didn't want to get on a stage. you know, I didn't want to get up in front of people and do it. I just wanted to do it for the love of it, the passion of it. You famously have stage fright. Exactly. I had so much state fright all of my life

until I won the fight with my voice and the Lyme's disease. Then I'm like, huh. New appreciation. Yeah. But it wasn't necessarily your dream. And there were all these odds stacked against you. So it feels like there was some design. I'm like, Mom, you've got a great plan.

I know you see my talents and you think I'm going to be a star. But no one's ever going to discover me where we are. I mean, no one's coming. I didn't know what's coming. to discover me in Timmons, Ontario in this bar. So in my child mind, I'm thinking, you know, can I just be a songwriter? Do I have to be in the spotlight? Do I have to be in front of so many people?

But you know what, no matter what you think, and no matter what you, you know, imagine that you were born for, destiny is set. I really so I believe that. You do. My belief is your destiny is set. And unless you go out a crystal ball, you're not going to know what it is. And the only difference between where you are in the beginning and where you end up serving your destiny, is how you get there. That's it. So I was so afraid of where it was going or where my mother wanted it

to go that I'm telling you, man, I took the, like, struggling the whole way to getting there. And then, you know, and so many things happen along the way. You know, my parents die along the way. And then I'm, then I've got the kids for a few years. And then now I'm, you know, that's now making. the road longer. And I start getting some breaks, but then this divorce, and then I lose my voice. And it's just, it couldn't have been a more crooked journey to reach the destiny. But it was destiny. And that was, you know, I could have given up anywhere along the way.

Right. There was a lot of your own agency involved. I mean, you worked really hard. And you kept trying. But I was, but I believe I was born. That's why I believe in destiny, because I was, I must have been born. For me to have reached this destiny, I had to have been born with some kind of fighter spirit. And some sort of, not combative, because I'm not a combative person, but I just had a resilience.

Yeah. that kept me on this crooked-ass course, this long and winding road. One of my favorite songs, by the way. Okay, I feel like we covered a lot of ground in that one. Let's keep going. One, two, or three. Let's go for three. What are you looking forward to when you're older?

Well, older. You can define what that means. Exactly. Two years from now, tomorrow, 20 years. I want to live till to be 200. 200? Yeah. I don't care how unrealistic that is.

That's... Yeah. But 200 just seems like a long time. No, no, but there's so much to do. Yeah, I know. Yeah. There's more life to be lived, yeah. I would rather project longevity and imagine that whatever it is that I want to do next or accomplish.

doesn't have to be rushed. So if I only think, oh, well, I'm only going to live to be 80, if that's my projection, well, then I'm going to hurry frigging up. Yeah, yep. Because I've got so much to do. Yeah. I got to, like, I'm never going to absorb it. I'm not going to live in the moment with it.

And I'm going to be rushing through it. And I don't want to live, like, life with urgency, right? Oh, my God. I hear you so much on that. Yeah. So I want to do whatever it is I want to do. I want to do it with quality. I want to absorb it. I want to enjoy it. I want to make so much more music, different kinds of music. I want to ride more horses. And, you know, there's so many things to do. I want to design. I love design. And I can't do all of it. And just 20 years. You need 200 years. Exactly. I'm all for it.

Let's meet again. Let's meet again. Exactly. A hundred years from now. Right? Listen, you got to use your imagination. This is what I do for a living. This is what I've done since I was a small child.

My imagination is my medicine. It's my escape. It's my joy. It's my... mood. It's my energy. So, you know, in my imagination, I'm going to live to be 200, and I'm going to achieve all these incredible things. Last question. One, two or three. One. One. Okay. This is interesting. We've sort of touched on this, but I'm going to ask it because that's what's on the card. Do you think people can actually change? I think people can change, yes.

Absolutely. My parents, they changed. They went from beating the crap out of each other to near death. Mm-hmm. And there was a, you know, reshaping of their mindsets. And then they never beat each other again. That's change. Yeah, for sure. You know?

I went to being afraid to leave the house, to leave the kids alone with my parents sometimes. to finally being able to move out of the house and get on with my life. Not for long, because then they died and then I, you know, but yeah. When people who've hurt you change, does it make it easier to forgive? Yes, when people change or they show the ability and the promise to change, It is so much easier to You know

The heart wants to And the heart doesn't want to be angry The heart is miserable angry It just It wants to So it gravitates to positive change And mine, I definitely do Yeah

I'm not a pushover By any means But I like to believe in the good in people And I'd rather be vulnerable a little bit, then, and, you know, I'd rather have a malleable heart than, you know, live defensively all the time. Yeah. Which is the tendency when you get hurt. Yeah, for sure. You know, to be cautious. Yeah. But you know, it's so much easier to let go.

It just feels so much better when you can let go. It's not always easy, but it's a better choice. We end the show the same way every time with a trip in our memory time machine. So in the time machine, you pick one moment from your past to revisit. It's not a moment you want to change anything about. It's just a moment you'd like to linger in a little longer. Which moment do you choose? Pregnancy.

I loved being pregnant. The whole nine months? I loved it from beginning to end. Do you remember a moment of being pregnant? Of maybe trying on a dress or feeling your baby or some moment when you felt really good that you'd like to linger in that moment? You mean like a singular, like isolated moment?

Yeah, yeah. I remember. I was in Milan and I was just walking down the street. shopping for baby things, enjoying all of that. And that day, and I must have been about seven months pregnant, I got so many compliments by all of these Italians about how beautiful of a pregnant woman I was, I'm thinking, I love this. I love being pregnant.

It was awesome. I was worried about getting the waddle walk, you know. My sister was always like, oh, you're going to walk like a penguin. You just wait. Never happened. You felt good. Felt good, felt strong. And I enjoyed it.

Yeah. I mean, the Italians know when they see something beautiful. When the Italians see, yeah. Okay, I never thought I'd be complimented for these curves. And then you had a baby boy. And I had a baby boy. The only downer about that was once I knew I was having a boy, now the shopping was. Boy clothes.

How many cute pairs of, you know, infant denim jumpsuits. I know, man. I'm the mother of two boys. I know. They're just not cute. So all the like really frilly fancy stuff. was out. But that's okay. I had a lot of fun. Shania Twain, her newest album is called Little Miss Twain. Shania Twain, my God, this was just so exciting for me. Thank you for doing it.

Thank you. It was fun. If you'd like to watch this episode or any of our other interviews, you can do so by checking out our YouTube page. Just search for NPR Wildcard. There you'll find video versions of all of our episodes. And if you were really into this episode with Shania, may I humbly suggest that you go check out my conversation with Amy Grant. Both women are at that stage in life when they're looking back at their careers with a certain amount of nostalgia, but they are not at all lost in it. In fact, they're feeling more creative than ever. This episode was produced by Mitra Arthur and Summer Tomod. It was edited by Dave Blanchard and mastered by Andy Huther. Wildcard's

executive producer is Yolanda Sanweni, and our theme music is by Romteen Arablewe. You can reach out to us at wildcard at npr.org. We're going to shuffle the deck and be back with more next week. Talk to you then.