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" It&amp;#039;s raining buckets near Nashville, enveloping the panorama of Sheryl Crow&amp;#039;s 50-acre ranch in a hazy liquid glow. Crow walks into the living room of her barn \u2014 a short distance from the beautiful main house \u2014 plops herself in one of two brown leather armchairs arranged in front of a fire and starts nibbling on a blueberry muffin. The room is a takeoff on a Western-style saloon, complete with a bar, a carousel horse, an upright piano and vintage posters hailing rustic Americana. The easygoing surroundings suit the nine-time Grammy winner, whose face is scrubbed clean of makeup and whose honey-colored hair is pulled back into a ponytail. Her clothes, too, are casual \u2014 dark jeans and a white shirt, sleeves turned up at her elbows. In flat-heeled boots, she is surprisingly petite. You could bump into her in the produce aisle \u2014 this megastar who&amp;#039;s sold 50 million albums worldwide \u2014 and merely do a minutes-later &amp;quot;Hey, that woman looked kinda familiar\u2026.&amp;quot; Crow&amp;#039;s younger son, Levi, 4, has been showing off for a guest, picking up his cat, Hank, and managing \u2014 barely \u2014 not to drop the wriggling animal, which is almost a third his size. He paternally sets Hank down in a cat bed, and Hank stays put! Levi grins at his accomplishment. The adorable towhead exits the room, and Crow turns around and sighs. Her mobile device has lit up with a weather alert: Flash flood! There&amp;#039;s also been a flash flood just eight miles from her parents&amp;#039; home in Missouri, &amp;quot;and they&amp;#039;ve been in the storm shelter all night,&amp;quot; she says worriedly. On top of that, there have been tornado warnings for an area encompassing Nashville. &amp;quot;Chuck,&amp;quot; Crow calls out to her ranch manager. &amp;quot;Wyatt&amp;#039;s school doesn&amp;#039;t have a storm basement\u2026.&amp;quot; (Wyatt is her 7-year-old.) Chuck makes a phone call to check on the boy and his classmates and reports that the kids are safe. More good news follows: The weather bureau has revised its forecast; there won&amp;#039;t be a tornado in Nashville. Crisis averted. Yet you get the feeling that even if a twister had crossed paths with Crow, she would have prevailed. In the past decade alone, she&amp;#039;s faced down breast cancer and a (benign) brain tumor, rebounded from a very public broken engagement and kept her footing in a fickle music industry. And she&amp;#039;s persevered through it all with grace and grit.  A Change of Heart Crow made the move to Nashville eight years ago \u2014 a heartfelt yet gutsy decision, since it was in entertainment-centric L.A. where the small-town Missouri girl had, 12 years earlier, shot from obscurity to critical acclaim. But with personal challenges come epiphanies, and after battling breast cancer, Crow wanted to return to her roots (her mom and dad and two of her three siblings live three and a half hours away, in southeast Missouri). &amp;quot;Something happens when you&amp;#039;re diagnosed with a disease,&amp;quot; she explains. &amp;quot;Your emotions start racing, and clarity is reached.&amp;quot; That wasn&amp;#039;t the only big change: Crow adopted Wyatt in 2007 and Levi three years after that. The decision to take on two kids as a single mom constituted an emotional leap of faith. Her own parents had then been married for more than 50 years (that &amp;quot;set the bar high,&amp;quot; she says). Now she and her brood are happily ensconced on this ranch about 30 minutes from Nashville. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ve become a glorified taxi driver,&amp;quot; she laughs with regard to the life she&amp;#039;s living now. Though she has a nanny and her sister Kathy, who lives nearby, helps out, Crow is a hands-on mom who takes the boys shopping at Target, drives them to Sunday school and swimming and tennis lessons and helps care for their pet guinea pigs. Two songs on her most recent album, Feels Like Home, which hit the airwaves last September \u2014 &amp;quot;Waterproof Mascara,&amp;quot; about a single mother whose son wonders why other children have daddies, and &amp;quot;Stay at Home Mother,&amp;quot; about the guilt of a hardworking mom \u2014 tap into wrenching modern-female universals and are based on Crow&amp;#039;s experiences. Still, her actual relationship to both situations contains more light than dark. She takes the boys with her when she&amp;#039;s on the road (they love their commodious bus) as much as Wyatt&amp;#039;s school schedule allows. As we talk, she&amp;#039;s preparing for a summer tour with the group Rascal Flatts. She&amp;#039;s also composing the notably un-country-music-like score for a hopefully Broadway-bound stage version of the 1982 movie Diner, and when it opens this coming December in Arlington, VA, &amp;quot;the boys will be there,&amp;quot; she says. Crow&amp;#039;s recent turn into country music came when she visited country singer Brad Paisley, a friend, and played him a few new songs she&amp;#039;d written. Paisley liked what he heard: &amp;quot;He told me, &amp;#039;You&amp;#039;ve inspired a lot of other women in the country world. It&amp;#039;s time for you to make a country record.&amp;#039; &amp;quot; That was music to her ears. Crow felt that country music, with its real-life-based lyrics (&amp;quot;like Tammy Wynette, like Loretta Lynn&amp;quot;) was more in tune with her current &amp;quot;been there, seen that&amp;quot; sensibilities. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s hard to be a woman in music today,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;There&amp;#039;s so much sex that&amp;#039;s projected, and that&amp;#039;s a bummer. These singers talk about how empowering it is, but a good musician who can command the stage doesn&amp;#039;t have to rely on sex to sell her music.&amp;quot; Since moving to Nashville, Crow has been feeling empowered in her relationships with men, too. That wasn&amp;#039;t always the case. With her earlier relationships, there had been a pattern: &amp;quot;I had always gone out with guys who were highly successful, which would seem like it would put me at an equal level,&amp;quot; says Crow, whose former boyfriends include actor Owen Wilson and musician Eric Clapton. &amp;quot;But what ends up happening is that one of you becomes smaller \u2014 and it was always me. It&amp;#039;s always the woman.&amp;quot; She pauses. &amp;quot;I mean, I don&amp;#039;t know if it&amp;#039;s always the woman, but I do think that sometimes in order for one person&amp;#039;s light to shine, everyone else has to dim theirs.&amp;quot; That changed when she took a friend&amp;#039;s words as her touchstone: &amp;quot;Embrace the idea of only having equals in your life, and you&amp;#039;ll see your relationships change.&amp;quot; Crow put that mantra to the test when, several years ago, she started dating a local musician (though they recently broke up, they remain friends). She believes the breakup had a minimal effect on her sons, because &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;d made a pact with myself that my kids would know anybody I was involved with as a friend first. They weren&amp;#039;t gonna wake up and find somebody sleeping in their house or feel abandoned because the relationship fell apart.&amp;quot; In fact, she thinks her boys have learned life lessons from observing the relationship: &amp;quot;You can still love and respect someone, even when you&amp;#039;re mad at them or disagree with them. And you can celebrate the good things happening for them, even when those things are not happening for you.&amp;quot; For now, Crow has cooled on the dating scene, though she admits, &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ve been set up before. It&amp;#039;s funny \u2014 my guy friends will tell me, &amp;#039;I don&amp;#039;t know anyone good enough for you.&amp;#039; And I keep saying, &amp;#039;Lower your standards!&amp;#039; &amp;quot; With that, Crow bursts out laughing at what she&amp;#039;s revealing about herself. &amp;quot;Hey, I would love to get married \u2014 I&amp;#039;m still old-fashioned. But I don&amp;#039;t think marriage is the be-all and end-all.&amp;quot; She pauses, then makes a joke about her own personal history: &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s better to have three broken engagements than three divorces.&amp;quot; Though she&amp;#039;s laughing, Crow seems to be justifying the life she&amp;#039;s ended up with \u2014 one that is far from the traditional family she was raised in, yet that still embodies many of its values.   Left: Teaming up with Michael Jackson during the Bad tour \u2014 &amp;quot;a crash course in music,&amp;quot; Crow calls it. Right: Crow, one of her favorite guitars in hand, gets a big break with her debut album, Tuesday Night Music Club. The Road to Stardom Crow grew up in Kennett, MO, as the third of four kids. Her mother, Bernice, a piano teacher, and her father, Wendell, a lawyer and trumpet player, were Midwestern to the core. At dinner, the TV was turned off. After the family meal, Wendell read books aloud to the children. The family attended Presbyterian church on Sundays. &amp;quot;It was a different time,&amp;quot; Crow muses. &amp;quot;Things were slower. There wasn&amp;#039;t cable, there weren&amp;#039;t tabloids. Your world was your town and the next town over.&amp;quot; Crow&amp;#039;s parents, who were in a swing band, were her earliest musical inspiration. &amp;quot;One night they came home from a gig and were singing and dancing,&amp;quot; she recalls. &amp;quot;My sisters and I sat on the stairs listening. It was cool to see my mom and dad as real people instead of just parents.&amp;quot; Crow herself took up the guitar and the piano, eventually graduating from the University of Missouri in 1984, with a degree in classical piano and voice, and moving to St. Louis. She got engaged and took a job teaching music at an elementary school, but dreams of performing were in the back of her mind. On weekends she sang in a band and was introduced to a record producer who used her voice in advertising jingles. One of them was purchased by McDonald&amp;#039;s. &amp;quot;It went network, and I wound up making more money on that jingle than I had in two years of teaching!&amp;quot; she says ($40,000, if you&amp;#039;re wondering). That clinched it: Crow decided to move to L.A. to give music a shot (her engagement had ended). She found a beach house that she shared with a number of women, but soon realized that the wild atmosphere wasn&amp;#039;t for her. She moved to a smaller house with two roommates, but found it equally nutty: &amp;quot;One of the girls was a seamstress for bands like Van Halen and Poison, so there&amp;#039;d be all of this spandex and these big-haired band guys walking around. Here I was, a little Goody Two-Shoes schoolteacher from Missouri!&amp;quot; Still, professionally, things were heating up, with Crow performing ad jingles for In-N-Out Burger, Lean Cuisine and other brands. Then, in 1987, at age 25, Crow landed a job as a backup singer on Michael Jackson&amp;#039;s Bad tour \u2014 it was her baptism into rock-and-roll life. She remembers Jackson as &amp;quot;very professional&amp;quot; but also &amp;quot;childlike, with probably an extreme case of arrested development. His emotional maturation stopped at 14.&amp;quot; She came back from the 18-month tour &amp;quot;slightly seasoned and a little wild around the edges.&amp;quot; People she met on the tour wanted to manage her and make her into something she wasn&amp;#039;t: a Madonna or Paula Abdul. Determined to create her own image, she got a waitressing job and started filling cassettes with songs. One, &amp;quot;All I Wanna Do,&amp;quot; was inspired by a bunch of talented musicians who hung out in Pasadena, CA, and called themselves the Tuesday Night Music Club. The single and the album it was part of \u2014 named, in fact, Tuesday Night Music Club \u2014 took off like a rocket in 1994 and earned Crow three Grammys, including Record of the Year. Not long before nabbing all that gold, she was awakened by a call at 4 A.M. Someone with an English accent said, &amp;quot;This is Mick Jagger,&amp;quot; and asked if she&amp;#039;d tour with him. The bleary-eyed Crow was skeptical, presuming it was an impostor, but the voice urged her not to hang up. Once she realized it really was the Rolling Stones&amp;#039; front man, she stammered a yes. Mere days later \u2014 during Thanksgiving, no less \u2014 she was on her way to Miami on a private plane to perform with the most storied rock-and-roll band in the world. Waiting to go onstage, &amp;quot;I was so nervous, I thought I was gonna hyperventilate,&amp;quot; she says. But Jagger made it fun, &amp;quot;dragging me all over the stage\u2026I felt like a 10-year-old!&amp;quot; Braving the Backlash Thrilling as that was, Crow quickly learned how unprepared she was for what followed. &amp;quot;When you&amp;#039;re newly out, you&amp;#039;re sort of being carried around on a platter. But eventually people get tired of you being the darling. People claimed, &amp;#039;She didn&amp;#039;t write her record herself.&amp;#039; &amp;quot; When Crow got a haircut, &amp;quot;they said I looked like a soccer mom. I realized fame doesn&amp;#039;t bring happiness; it creates immense insecurity.&amp;quot; Determined to prove her critics wrong, she locked herself away in a recording studio and produced her next album, simply titled Sheryl Crow. Though the album earned her two more Grammys, Crow decided changes were in order. She moved to New York City to be near her manager and friends and released her third album, the critically acclaimed Globe Sessions. &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s when things started feeling normal again,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;But I wasn&amp;#039;t an innocent anymore. I&amp;#039;d become an adult and a businesswoman.&amp;quot; In 2003 she fell in love with seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong, who was a decade younger. (Armstrong&amp;#039;s disgrace \u2014 the revelation of his doping and his being stripped of his titles \u2014 would come years after they&amp;#039;d broken up.) Crow moved to Austin to be with him, and they announced their engagement in the fall of 2005. The singer supported Armstrong&amp;#039;s cancer organization (now the Livestrong Foundation) as well as his competitive cycling career and became close to his three children. She continued to write, record and tour even though, she realized later, she was making herself &amp;quot;really small&amp;quot; next to him. Without recognizing it, she had turned herself into a &amp;quot;self-appointed caretaker&amp;quot; for a wide swath of people \u2014 always making sure that &amp;quot;everyone else was OK, everyone else was happy.&amp;quot;   A 2012 outing at SeaWorld San Diego with sons Wyatt, left, and Levi. Surviving and Thriving Five months after the engagement announcement, the couple went their separate ways. Shortly after their split, Crow was diagnosed with breast cancer following an irregular mammogram. Her entire family flew to her side for her treatment: a lumpectomy followed by seven weeks of radiation. The nurturing by family members \u2014 and her girlfriends, who treated her to a trip to Puerto Vallarta to celebrate the end of her treatment \u2014 made her realize that she wanted to be near her family full-time. To create the intimacy she now craved, she put down roots in nearby Nashville. Crow realized something else, too: I want to be a mom, and I&amp;#039;m not going to limit it anymore by saying I have to be married. Perhaps my life will unfold out of the order I&amp;#039;ve been told it was supposed to be in. When her parents casually said, &amp;quot;Why not adopt a child?&amp;quot; she felt permission to be even more unconventional: &amp;quot;My mom even said, &amp;#039;Why don&amp;#039;t you get a surrogate?&amp;#039; I remember thinking, Wow, what an evolved thing for a 70-year-old woman to think!&amp;quot; Crow adopted Wyatt in 2007; though it was a closed adoption, she was so intimately involved that she was present at his birth and she cut his umbilical cord. Then came Levi, in 2010. That adoption opportunity &amp;quot;happened so quickly, it was like contraband,&amp;quot; she says, exaggerating the whirlwind nature of the experience. &amp;quot;I got a phone call, showed up and picked up a paper bag with a baby in it.&amp;quot; Though Wyatt and Levi had different birth parents, &amp;quot;they could not be more brothers if I&amp;#039;d had them both myself,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;They understand that they came out of different tummies. But they also believe, as do I, that God put us together. They know how blessed I am to get to be their mommy. So when they&amp;#039;re mad that I won&amp;#039;t let them play video games, I say, &amp;#039;God put me in charge. I&amp;#039;m raising you-all the best that I can, and some decisions are not fun.&amp;#039; &amp;quot; The boys were very much Crow&amp;#039;s main concern when she had another health scare in 2011. During a routine physical, she mentioned to her doctor, &amp;quot;You know, I feel like my memory is not sharp. I think I have early-onset Alzheimer&amp;#039;s or something.&amp;quot; Her doctor dismissed that possibility but suggested investigating the cause. A few weeks later, Crow was doing a fund-raiser for figure skater Scott Hamilton, a friend of hers, and the Cleveland Clinic. Hamilton had had cancer and a benign brain tumor, and he had received excellent care there. &amp;quot;On a whim, I asked him, &amp;#039;Hey, could you get me set up for an MRI?&amp;#039; &amp;quot; Hamilton arranged for her to have the test done the next morning. Later that night, she performed at the benefit, and after she came offstage, the hospital&amp;#039;s head of neurology approached her and said, &amp;quot;I want to talk to you before you leave. You have a brain tumor. I don&amp;#039;t think it&amp;#039;s anything to worry about, but I want to do further testing.&amp;quot; Crow was stunned. &amp;quot;When you hear it&amp;#039;s your brain \u2014 that&amp;#039;s command central \u2014 it sends off a signal of tortured fatality,&amp;quot; she says. She rushed home to Nashville and spent &amp;quot;two surreal days with my boys, not letting them out of my sight.&amp;quot; After that precious private time, she went to nearby Vanderbilt University Medical Center for further tests and was diagnosed with a meningioma, a typically benign brain tumor. Since the tumor is tiny and will most likely grow slowly, if at all, Crow, following medical advice, has chosen not to have it surgically removed. Instead, she has it monitored, getting checked once a year. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m going to get another MRI soon,&amp;quot; she says with the practiced calm of a woman who sees the latest news as just another bump in the road. &amp;quot;But I&amp;#039;m not worried. It doesn&amp;#039;t inform my day.&amp;quot; Crow, who describes her daily life as &amp;quot;spinning 50 plates at a time,&amp;quot; has vowed to take things easier. These days, she relaxes by sitting down with a good book or having a night in to watch some TV. She hangs out with pals like Kimberly Williams-Paisley, Brad Paisley&amp;#039;s wife; Tracie Hamilton, who&amp;#039;s married to Scott Hamilton; and Nicole Kidman (who calls Nashville home since moving there with her husband, country singer Keith Urban). &amp;quot;We have dinners at one of our houses on a rotating basis,&amp;quot; says Crow. &amp;quot;The kids eat early, the adults later.&amp;quot; And she&amp;#039;s a big believer in mindfulness meditation, scheduling 20-minute time-outs each day &amp;quot;to quiet my mind.&amp;quot; Still, some thoughts can&amp;#039;t be easily tamed. &amp;quot;Sometimes I&amp;#039;ll wake up in the middle of the night,&amp;quot; she says, duplicating the gasp she emits, &amp;quot;and I&amp;#039;ll be ruminating about things like, My kids don&amp;#039;t have a dad! or worrying about a business thing. It feels like everything&amp;#039;s insurmountable.&amp;quot; She&amp;#039;s exaggerating, of course. This woman \u2014 who has built a 20-year music career on her own terms, faced down cancer and created a beautiful family out of sheer determination and love \u2014 knows that nothing in life is impossible. Rising from her armchair, she excuses herself: It&amp;#039;s time to pick up her older boy from school. Outside, the tornado has moved on, but the rain still lingers. Crow steps into the storm, hatless and undaunted. Photos: Jeff Lipsky; Redferns/Getty Images; Contour by Getty Images; Getty Images NEXT: 15 Celebs Who Seriously Adore Their Moms \u00BB "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/life/inspirational-stories/interviews/a25284/sheryl-crow/>