## A Shattering Loss
Before she became the best-selling female artist in the history of country music, Shania Twain endured a harrowing struggle for survival. Growing up in extreme poverty in rural Canada, her life took a devastating turn when she was 22 years old. In 1987, her mother and stepfather were killed in a tragic head-on car collision with a logging truck.
## Becoming the Parent
Overnight, Shania (then known as Eilleen) was forced to put her music career in Nashville completely on hold. She took full responsibility for raising her three younger teenage siblings. To keep food on the table and pay the bills, she took a job singing at the Deerhurst Resort in Ontario, performing strenuous, highly theatrical shows multiple times a day while simultaneously managing a household of grieving teenagers.
## The Diamond Superstar
Shania supported her siblings until they were old enough to move out on their own. Only then did she finally pack up her bags and relocate to Nashville to pursue her dream. That incredibly hard-won resilience forged the fierce, deeply independent, unshakeable confidence that would eventually power the massive, diamond-selling albums that revolutionized country pop music forever.