Country singer Shania Twain (1965–), free to dream and change the world with her talent, was born Eileen Regina Edwards on this day in Windsor, Ontario, Canada.

"My dream as a child was to be Stevie Wonder's backup singer. That's all I wanted to be," she said about her early aspirations.

A rags-to-riches story, she grew up impoverished. "I often went to bed hungry. Food, for me is a luxury."

Losing both parents in an auto accident, she became "sister-mom" at 21 to her three younger siblings.

"When you go through something as drastic and traumatic as that, you realize you have nothing to lose in life."

Ready for any challenge, in 1991 she changed her name to Shania ("on my way" in Ojibwa, the American Indian dialect of her adopted father), then headed for Nashville. Catchy songs and memorable videos helped sell her music, an irresistible blend of pop-country with rock.

Her records busted the charts. By the time she turned 50 in 2015, Twain had sold more than 75 million albums worldwide, with 17 top 10 singles.

As Billboard once observed, before Twain blazed her trail, “there was no job description for what she is — a pop femme fatale in country.” With fearless style and genre-bending hits, she rewrote the rules and redefined the audience.

And Twain is also changing the lives of children. Her foundation, Shania Kids Can!, provides at-risk children "club house" havens with "academic, extra-curricular, therapeutic and nutritional support."

“These students need to know that they are understood and that they CAN overcome the disadvantages in their personal lives,” she said. “I know these kids CAN do it, and we CAN help them.”

With spirit and unshakable vulnerability, Shania Twain continues to live her dreams, redefine country-pop, and show us what it means to be a woman who gives back with heart.