Rock singer Sheryl Crow has spoken about her double struggle to adopt a second child and survive breast cancer.
In an interview with The Mail on Sunday's You magazine, she reveals how, after overcoming a lumpectomy and undergoing daily radiotherapy, 10 different chances of adopting a child fell through.
Now at last she has her second son, two-month-old Levi James, her career is back on track and she is preparing for a UK tour this autumn.
The 48-year-old, who has sold 35 million records and won nine Grammys, tells of her personal and professional struggles.
"An adoptive mother goes through more hoops than those people who thoughtlessly become pregnant," she says.
"I had about 10 adoptions fall through last year so there was a real sense of relief when he [Levi James] was mine.
"It's a long process and it's fraught with uncertainty. Another person is carrying a baby and when that baby finally arrives, their feelings may have changed."
Crow adopted her first son, Wyatt, now three, in 2007 —shortly after splitting from cyclist and cancer survivor Lance Armstrong. Just a few days after the split was made public, Crow was diagnosed with cancer in her left breast.
However, she refused the seven-time Tour de France winner's offer of support preferring to face treatment alone.
She says: "Everything came to a screeching halt and it created an opportunity to rewrite my future, whether I wanted it or not.
"It was coming to terms with the way my life functioned by habit. I didn't understand, until those events collided, how to live through an emotion."
About her cancer treatment, she says: "Every morning I would go in and lie on that aluminium table with my arm over my head and I would face this massive mothership —the irradiation machinery was like an alien spaceship — and I met myself on that table. I met someone I had forgotten about."
Crow also talked about her "first act of rebellion" when she left her family and moved to glamorous Los Angeles, aged 26, after a tame upbringing in Kennett, Missouri.
"But I think my naivety worked in my favour because I simply assumed that if I worked hard, my career would work out."
