Long before she was a household name, Wynonna Judd was just a young girl named Christina Claire Ciminella growing up in the deep poverty of Appalachia. She didn’t have a glamorous childhood; there was no TV or phone, and sometimes she and her sister Ashley went to bed without eating dinner because they simply didn’t have the money. At twelve years old, she decided to change her name to Wynonna, inspired by a song, marking the start of a new identity. Her mother, Naomi, was a single parent raising two girls on welfare and food stamps, but she was also her daughter’s first musical partner. They started performing together out of boredom and necessity, eventually becoming a powerhouse duo that would tour the country for nearly two decades.

Success came quickly, but it didn’t cure the loneliness that had settled into her bones after her parents’ divorce. Wynonna struggled with her weight for years, using food as a way to comfort the panicky, isolated feelings she couldn’t escape even when she had a number-one record. Things got even more complicated when she was thirty and learned a secret her mother had kept for decades: the man she thought was her father wasn’t her biological dad at all. Naomi had gotten pregnant at seventeen by someone who didn’t stick around, and she’d married another man just to give her daughter a name. This revelation left Wynonna raging with pain for nearly nine years, making her feel like an outsider in her own family even as she stood on the biggest stages in the world.M