Shania Twain is finally ready to open up and share her struggles after her 14 year marriage ended when she discovered her best friend had an affair with her husband and the singer then lost her voice.
The 45 year-old covers Redbook for June 2011 and tells the magazine how she’s learned that betrayal gives you strength.
“Being betrayed is one of the most valuable lessons life can teach,” she says. “Now that you are wise to the game, you have the tools to choose your friends more carefully and protect your inner circle from these predators.”
“Wear your scars like a badge,” Twain recounts. “Someone hurt you, you lived through it, and now you can talk about it without rage and revenge in your heart.”
The stress from divorcing her husband, Mutt Lange and losing her best friend Mari-Anne Thiebaud manifested itself physically for Shania.
“When my marriage broke down, I got so physically constricted that I couldn’t get any volume out at all. . . . I realized I couldn’t live without singing and had to do something about it,” the singer said. “This is why I was like, ‘Just get it all out right now. Clean the pipes.’”
In a twist of fate, she fell for and recently married the former husband of Mari-Anne and Twain says that Frederic Thiebaud is “exemplary.”
“I got to observe Fred going through the same thing I was, and I admired how he handled it. That is where I fell in love with him, because he was so exemplary in every way,”the in-love Shania sings about her husband.
“He’s attentive, brighter than God should ever allow any one man to be, funny, romantic, and cute as heck. Most of all, he shows what he feels, and that’s a quality that could come in any shape or size and be admired—it just so happens that Fred has a very gorgeous shape. He’s too good to be true, only he’s real! Good for me, is all I can say, and I’m loving every minute of it.”
