Twain underwent two open-throat surgeries in 2011.
Shania Twain says she was "petrified" about making a sound following her open-throat surgery just over a decade ago. Her fear, however, immediately dissipated when she made the first sound. Suddenly, she was excited. And just like that, some things got easier for the iconic singer.
In an interview with InStyle, the "Any Man of Mine" songstress recalled the fears that washed over her at the thought of having open-throat surgery (twice) in 2011, triggered by nerve damage as a result of Lyme disease, which she contracted in 2003 while horseback riding.
The singer said that "for six or seven years" she saw doctors and nobody could figure out why her voice was changing and fading. Finally, a doctor made the connection to Lyme disease.
"After I had the surgery, I was petrified to make a sound. I didn't know what was going to come out," she told the women's fashion magazine. "It did scare me, but I just had to take a leap and make a sound. And I was so excited about what came out. It was a connection to the vocal cords and it came out very easily. I was really, really, really excited."
Twain shared that it was actually her friends Gladys Knight and Lionel Richie who encouraged her to sing again. And, when she did, Twain realized some things became easier to do.
"It's easier for me to make loud sounds than it is to make soft sounds," she said. "When the air is dry, it's harder to get that resonance. When I'm loud, it happens, which was the opposite problem before I got the surgery."
Something else changed, too. Twain's ability to let things be.
"I'm just not as worried as I was when I was younger. I'm a professional. I want things to be great. I want to be as perfect as I can be as a professional, but I'm not a perfect person," she said. "I sound different. I look different and I'm OK with that. I'm fearless in that way and that motivates me."
Back in September, Twain opened up to ET about how music got her through her darkest times, from her health struggles to her 2010 divorce from Robert "Mutt" Lange, all of which was covered in her Netflix documentary, Not Just a Girl.
"Anywhere where there was a personal crisis that created a shift in my career was included as part of that explanation," she shared. "The obvious ones being, first of all, the poverty in my life, which was really a huge part of my musical development and how that developed in my life, and also being very isolated with that... The death of my parents, which was a crossroads of, 'Do I quit altogether, get a real job, then be able to feed the kids and survive?'"
"The next one was losing my voice through... getting a divorce," Twain added. "... They were sort of happening simultaneously, both very devastating, obviously, to my career, both directly affecting my career and the changes and the directions it would take."
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