Once liver disease forced me to retire from my country music career in 1991 I thought people wouldn\u2019t be interested in my life anymore. Turns out they have more questions than ever.<\/p>\n
Folks always ask: How did a girl from sleepy little Ashland, Kentucky, who\u2019d nev\u00ader sung a note in public, end up performing concerts all across America? How did a single mom who just wanted to find steady work become a country music star? How did I keep from losing my spirit when I lost the career I loved? How did I find healing from a devastating chronic illness<\/a>?<\/p>\n The answers are really different verses of the same song. The song of faith, of believing, of seeing not with the eyes, but with the mind and heart and soul.<\/p>\n The first verse came to me in the spring of 1975, af\u00adter I\u2019d moved back to Kentucky with my daughters, Wynonna<\/a>, 10, and Ashley, 6. I needed to put the troubles of the last six years in Los Angeles be\u00adhind me\u2014a divorce from the girls\u2019 dad (whose job had taken us to California), a string of dead-end jobs (all I could get without a college degree), a stint on welfare.<\/p>\n I wanted to give my girls the stable upbringing they deserved. Where better to do that than in the Kentucky hills where my roots were?<\/p>\n We stayed in a dirt-cheap rental cabin near Berea while I start\u00aded my nursing school classes. I promised Wy and Ashley<\/a>, \u201cThis is just until we find a place of our own.\u201d Except, six months lat\u00ader we were still there.<\/p>\n Had I uprooted my girls for nothing? One day in May when they were at school, I turned on the radio, opened the window and sat down on a blan\u00adket right outside so I could listen to music while I studied. The Stanley Brothers\u2019 achingly beautiful bluegrass<\/a> tunes came on. I closed my eyes and drifted back to my childhood, back to the days when God was as real as our house at 2237 Montgomery Av\u00adenue.<\/p>\n Lord, even if I can\u2019t lay eyes on you, I still know you\u2019re real, <\/em>I prayed. So I\u2019m going to believe the same with this home we\u2019re searching for. I will hold on to this image in my heart\u2014a cozy little house in the hills\u2014and have faith that you\u2019ll lead us to it.<\/em><\/p>\n The following evening the girls and I were driving through Berea when we saw an elderly woman slip and fall. We stopped to check on her. She\u2019d twisted her ankle badly, and the aspiring nurse in me insisted we take her to the emergency room. We got to talking, and I confided my difficulty in finding a home.<\/p>\n The next day I found a note in my mailbox at nursing school from Mar\u00adgaret Allen, a friend of the woman we\u2019d stopped to help. Mrs. Allen had a house she wanted to show me.<\/p>\n Her directions took us to the tiny town of Morrill. We turned off Big Hill Road and at the crest of a knoll stood a two-story house with a big front porch<\/a> and apple trees dotting the yard. An elderly lady stepped out and introduced herself as Margaret Allen. \u201cWelcome to Chanticleer,\u201d she said. \u201cYour new home.\u201d<\/p>\n I was speechless. \u201cIt\u2019s com\u00adpletely furnished, linens, dish\u00ades, silverware, everything. . . . \u201d she said. \u201cCome, I\u2019ll show you.\u201d<\/p>\n Inside, the house was even loveli\u00ader, like something out of a fairy tale, filled with antiques. \u201cMrs. Allen, we couldn\u2019t possibly afford to rent this place!\u201d I gasped.<\/p>\n \u201cCould you afford one hundred dollars a month?\u201d she asked. \u201cI don\u2019t need the money, just the right people to have it.\u201d<\/p>\n We moved into Chanticleer in June, and it was there on that big front porch we discovered something that would change our lives. Some\u00adone had given me an old guitar<\/a>, and just for fun I brought it out. Wynonna took to the guitar like a bee to honeysuckle, returning to it again and again.<\/p>\n I bought Wy her own guitar, a used but nice instrument. I unearthed an old bluegrass album by Hazel and Al\u00adice in the used bin at a record store. Two women singing, their voices blending in a way that sent shivers up our spines. That was the sound of our Kentucky hills!<\/p>\n Wy and I taught ourselves every song on that record. Strange thing was, I\u2019d never sung before, not even in church\u2014I\u2019d felt too shy to do more than mouth the hymns. But on the porch with Wyn\u00adonna, a voice I never knew I had came out, harmonizing naturally with hers, a musical expression of our family bond. The first song we learned all the way through was \u201cA Mother\u2019s Smile.\u201d<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t till four years later that I learned the second verse of my own song of faith<\/a>. By then I knew music was Wy\u2019s gift, her destiny. My job was to go with her and make sure it didn\u2019t become her downfall too. I\u2019d started writing songs for us to sing together, and we moved to Nashville\u2014Music City, USA\u2014on the condition that she finish high school.<\/p>\n I house-sat while we looked for a place in the countryside to rent. I had to wait for my Tennessee nursing certification to come in, so I took a low-paying job as an assis\u00adtant to a booking agent on Music Row.<\/p>\n One Friday night that summer of 1979 Larry Strickland, an amazing bass singer whose band my boss managed, asked me out. Since I didn\u2019t go to bars or clubs, I suggested we check out an old property I\u2019d heard about in Franklin, just outside Nashville. We stood in the moonlight looking at the neglected house and just talked. Then he kissed me softly and that was it. I was head over heels.<\/p>\n Sunday after church I called Lar\u00adry on the road only to find he was out with another woman. My heart broke. That night the person I was house-sit\u00adting for told me he would be returning soon, and we\u2019d have to move on. I felt so defeated. No partner, no real job, no place to call home. Had I dragged us right back into the mess I\u2019d worked so hard to get us away from?<\/p>\n That\u2019s when I remembered a verse from Hebrews I\u2019d heard in church that morning: \u201cNow faith is the sub\u00adstance of things hoped for, the evi\u00addence of things not seen.\u201d<\/p>\n God, I\u2019m going to believe that all the dreams I have in my heart are as real as you are, <\/em>I prayed. Our own home, with everything in it working. A car that didn\u2019t clank, smoke or break down. A job that would leave me enough to buy my daughters Christmas pres\u00adents. And finally, the wildest dream of all, a career in country music<\/a>.<\/p>\n I pictured the future I hoped for. I formed a clear image of it in my mind. Then I set about making it happen. I stepped out in faith<\/a> and rented the run-down house in Franklin for three hundred and fifty dollars a month. The girls and I fixed it up, one thing at a time. And with a lot of talking and praying, Larry and I patched things up too.<\/p>\n My nursing certification came in that winter. I signed up with a nurs\u00ades\u2019 registry so I would have flexibili\u00adty in my work schedule to check out music-related opportunities. Like sweet-talking a local TV producer into letting Wynonna and me perform on the early morning Ralph Emery Show <\/em>on February 11, 1980. We became reg\u00adulars on the show.<\/p>\n One of my patients, a teenager recovering from a car ac\u00adcident, recognized me from TV. She introduced me to her dad, record producer Brent Maher. I mustered up the nerve to give him a demo tape Wyn\u00adonna and I had made on our Kmart tape recorder. Right away Brent un\u00adderstood our unique sound. He and manager Ken Stilts, Sr., landed us an unprecedent\u00aded live audition with RCA Re\u00adcords.<\/p>\n On March 2, 1983, in the RCA board\u00adroom, Wy and I reached back to our roots, to the very first song we\u2019d learned, \u201cA Mother\u2019s Smile.\u201d Like the old days on our front porch, our voices came together in perfect harmony<\/a>. Forty-five minutes later, we were officially RCA record\u00ading artists!<\/p>\n Seven years on top of the country music world\u2014that\u2019s what Wynonna and I were blessed with. Then in 1990 my body fell apart and I would have too, if I hadn\u2019t discovered the third verse of my lifelong song. The symp\u00adtoms started with headaches and de\u00adbilitating exhaustion. Some days I couldn\u2019t even get out of bed.<\/p>\n Wy and I had to cancel one concert after anoth\u00ader. Blood tests showed I had hepatitis C<\/a>, a chronic and sometimes fatal liver disease that I\u2019d most likely contracted from an accidental needle stick in my nursing days.<\/p>\n Treatment with the antiviral drug interferon didn\u2019t work, and my weak\u00adened system couldn\u2019t take the stress of touring. I had no choice. I would have to give up the career I loved. There would be no more making music. No more chasing dreams. What if you don\u2019t live to see your daughters get married? <\/em>The fears taunted me. What if you never know your grand\u00adchildren?<\/em><\/p>\n I went right to a children\u2019s store and started grabbing christening gowns and baby blankets for Wy and Ashley to save for their kids. Maybe it was touching those things, so con\u00adcrete and real, that made me remem\u00adber the song, the faith, that had saved me before. I called our church elders to set up a prayer healing<\/a>.<\/p>\n That night they anointed me with oil, and I claimed my healing, just like I\u2019d claimed all the other dreams God had put in my heart. Lord, from now on I will focus not on my illness but on the restoration of my health. On both Wynonna and me coming out of this whole.<\/em><\/p>\n Knowing God had the power to make all of that real, I went on our 1991 Farewell Tour. My liver function continued to be monitored, but no longer with any fear about the results. I took my final bows with Wynonna on December 4, feeling completely at peace.<\/p>\n And so I remain, living in harmo\u00adny with God\u2019s ongoing vision for me. Which is as real as my 11-year-long remission from hepatitis C. As real as Wy\u2019s success as a solo artist and Ash\u00adley\u2019s as an actress. As real as the books I\u2019ve written and the TV shows I\u2019ve done since my \u201cretirement.\u201d As real as the Sunday dinners Larry and I have at home at Peaceful Valley, the farm we share with Ashley and her hus\u00adband, Dario Franchitti, and Wynonna and her two kids, the grandchildren I once thought I would never live to see. As real as the vision that fills my mind, heart and soul\u2014of a loving God<\/a> with his arms wrapped around my life.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n