Shania Twain "grieved" for her career after contracting Lyme disease.
Shania Twain
The 51-year-old singer - who has son Eja, 15, with ex-husband Mutt Lange - feared she would never sing again after the tick-borne condition caused her to lose much of her voice and admitted it was a very "depressing" time for her.
She said: "It's a very debilitating disease, very degenerative. So I was very lucky at all that it affected the nerves on my vocal cords, not the vocal cords.
"I lost my voice for several years and I could speak but I couldn't yell. I could never yell for my dog or my son or whatever.
"I also felt that I was never going to make another album -- that was probably my truth. It was devastating. I really grieved about that. It did bring me down and I struggled with it every day."
However, the 'That Don't Impress Me Much' hitmaker sought solace in knowing she could still pour out her creativity in writing songs, even if she couldn't perform them herself.
She added to The Sun newspaper's 'Bizarre Life' podcast: "It was very depressing and I was really sad about it but I still had my writing and my writing is my first love, really, over everything.
"I was only going to be a writer and not the performer."
Shania - who is making a musical comeback after 15 years out of the spotlight - also spoke of her devastation when ex-husband Mutt left her for her best friend, Marie-Anne Thiebaud, in 2008 as she admitted she thought their union would last forever.
She said: "I thought that marriage was forever. I really, really believed that. I thought, 'I'm safe. This creative relationship is forever'. And I really counted on that.
"I never even considered that it would ever be different. I was committed and that would be the rest of my life. I was sure of that.
"So when that fell away, the marriage fell away, the friendship falls away with that, and every part of that falls away. And of course the musical collaboration fell away."
The 'Man! I Feel Like a Woman' singer is now happily married to Marie-Anne's ex-husband, Frederic Thiebaud, and sees their bond as a "gift", though she has learned not to take it for granted.
She said: "I think, for me, love is a gift. It's a necessity. But you're still lucky if you have it, so you can't count on it.
"And I guess in that sense, that's where my survival instincts come in.
"If I had never found love again, I'm not going to lay down and die. But I'm very lucky that I did.
"And that of course re-energises all of the inspiration that any creative person needs. Falling in and out of love is always inspiration to be creative, for me."
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