Faith Hill, 56 has gone from strength to strength as one of the most successful country singers of all time, she’s married to fellow country singer Tim McGraw and is a mom to three girls.
But life for the five-time Grammy award singer hasn’t always been one of success and happiness. Her childhood was filled with a desperation to find her biological parents.
Born in Ridgeland, Mississippi in 1967, her parents Ted and Edna Perry never concealed the fact they had adopted her and didn’t tell her the full story of her adoptive parents.
“I had been told that [my birth mother] had an affair with a married man, and he didn’t want to leave his wife to marry her, so she gave me up for adoption,” Faith has said, as per Good Housekeeping. “But it was completely untrue.”
She was raised with two brothers, the biological sons of the Perrys, and she was the only one in her family with a musical talent.
Faith admits she was adopted into a loving and positive home but was yearning to find out her birth story as well as achieve musical success.
At just 19 years old she quit school and moved to Nashville to pursue her career. Although the road was rocky to start she has never looked back and now enjoys worldwide fame after selling more than 40 million albums.
It was during those first few years in Nashville that Faith said she felt lost and started looking for her birth mother.
“There was a period of time when I first moved to Nashville, like the first couple of years, that I was just simply lost. That’s when I went on the search for my birth family,” she said.
During this time Faith met her first husband, music publishing executive Daniel Hill. The two married in 1988 and not long after a co-worker heard Hill singing to herself and she was encouraged by the head of her music publishing company to become a demo singer.
During a performance singing backup vocals for songwriter Gary Burr she was spotted by Martha Sharp, an executive from Warner Bros. record who then signed her.
It was at this time in her life she began to have doubts about her marriage, around the same time she found her birth mother in 1993. The meeting was a life-changing experience for Faith but had consumed her energy at a time when she should have been enjoying her newfound success.
Shortly after the release of her album, she and Daniel Hill divorced in 1994.
She recalled how similar she was to her mother and couldn’t help but stare on their first meeting.
Faith continued to see her mom after that, who she chose not to name to protect her privacy, but did reveal that she was a professional painter. She also learned that she had a biological brother.
She said knowing that her mother was an artist helped her understand “why she had felt like a misfit.”
Now she’s a successful mom to three daughters after marrying fellow country star Tim McGraw in 1996.
During a 2006 Glamour interview, Faith revealed that she and Tim are strict raising the girls but one of the most important lessons she was teaching them was self-worth, adding: “Tim and I are strict parents, but we’ve taught them to stay independent, even at a very young age. We want them to be able to think for themselves.”
I’m glad that Hill has forged a relationship with her biological mother. It’s important that we all know where we came from.
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