Sheryl Crow recalled fighting breast cancer while watching her former fiancé Lance Armstrong move on after their breakup.
“I was engaged, I had three beautiful stepchildren, I wanted to have kids with this person. We split in the same week … I got diagnosed with breast cancer,” Crow, 64, recalled on the Tuesday, May 19, episode of Bobby Bones’ “The Bobbycast” podcast on Netflix. “[Then] I found out he was seeing a really famous actress.”
She continued, “I really felt like I went through about nine months of radiation and grieving and anger.”
Crow and Armstrong, 54, were together from 2003 to 2006, when they broke off their five-month engagement over the singer’s desires to have children. (Armstrong shares son Luke, 26, and twin daughters Isabelle and Grace, 24, with ex-wife Kristin Richard, later welcoming two children with current wife Anna Hansen ahead of their 2022 wedding.)
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For Crow, it wasn’t until she spoke with her physician that she was able to move forward from the breakup.
“I had a really stoic oncologist who literally looked like my grandmother. One of the things that she said to me was like, ‘I’ve had a thousand women come through with breast cancer. Don’t miss out on the lesson,’” she recalled. “I realized, having gone through all that, that I am a caretaker. I’m the last person I take care of. I take care of everybody’s emotions [and] I make sure everybody is good with me.”
Crow added, “It took my life screeching to a halt to get to a place to go, ‘OK, who am I and why am I doing what I’m doing? Do I love what I’m doing? What am I supposed to be doing? Do I want to be a mom?’”
After Crow’s breast cancer went into remission, she adopted son Wyatt in 2007 and son Levi in 2010.
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“I have my own belief system. I believe your kids pick you. I don’t think you ever get the wrong kid. I know that sounds really woo-woo, but your kid picked you at this moment,” she stated on Tuesday. “You’re ready, and you don’t want to spend too much time overanalyzing, ‘Why now? Am I gonna be this? Am I gonna be that?’ Because then you miss out on the now.”
Crow continued, “It took me forever to get to the place where I was, like, open-armed and like, ‘OK, I may not get to be a mom. I’ve loved a lot of amazing people and I’ve loved some other people too, and that was where I got off.’ At which point, I was like, ‘OK, God, I’m just gonna get in the boat, I’m gonna start rowing. If you meet me halfway with a baby, great, [and] if you don’t.’ Lo and behold, the two boys that I have could not be more brother-ish, could not be more of a Crow and it could not have picked me at a [better time]. I mean, I was ready and I was awake and aware, and I wanted them.”
