Some publisher made the decision to release Shania Twain’s memoir yesterday, the same day as Jesse James’ memoir. I realize that they don’t have the same target audience, but I hate that publicity for Shania’s memoir could be overshadowed by Jesse’s drama. (I got Jesse James’ memoir on iBooks and we have a story coming up with quotes from it in just a moment.)

Parade has some advance quotes from Shania’s memoir, From This Moment On. She discusses how she dealt with the shock and pain when she found out her husband of 12 years, Mutt Lange, was cheating on her with a good friend of the family. Shania ended up hooking up with her husband’s mistresses’ estranged husband (it makes sense if you think of it like a partner swap) and it was a trade up for the both of them. She just remarried in January and seems blissfully happy but still wounded and affected by what she went through. She’s also back in the spotlight now after a long career hiatus. In these excerpts she’s almost poetic when she describes going through that ordeal and falling in love again.

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 Parade]

Shania was on Oprah yesterday and I read through the recap on Oprah’s site. You can also read highlights of her interview on People and Popeater. It sounds like she still sort-of blames the other woman, but that’s understandable because her then-husband’s mistress was her best friend and assistant. She told Oprah that when she asked the other woman if her husband was acting strange, she was all “I think he’s fine.” She hasn’t seen the mistress since, but she wrote her a letter asking her to leave her family alone that she shares in her book. Shania explained that we all have very low moments in our lives, and that was hers.

Shania strikes me as such a feeling person and someone who is fragile but ready to be back in the public eye. I admire her
and think she handled this all so well. To Oprah, Shania revealed that she suffers from a medical condition called dysphonia that squeezes her vocal chords, but says she hopes that she’ll be able to sing again soon. She has so many fans that feel the same.

Shania is shown on 3/27/11 at the Juno awards. Credit: WENN