Introduction:
Tayla Lynn will always being thankful to her grandmother — legendary country singer Loretta Lynn — for validating what she went through as a young girl.
During a Thursday, Aug. 1 appearance on the Rooted Recovery Stories podcast, Tayla opened up about enduring abuse by her stepfather as a young girl — and how her grandmother’s belief in what her granddaughter told her ended up saving Tayla.
Reflecting on the experience, Tayla said that when she finally decided to escape her stepfather, who had broken her ribs and nose, she went to live with her grandmother.
“I was like, ‘I can’t stay.’ I was so scared. And my mom didn’t want to go to my grandmother’s and she went back to him. And then I just never went back,” she recalled, adding that to this day, she thinks people don’t believe her.
“My grandmother and my aunt, the most beautiful gift that they could have ever given me — and I don’t even know where these pictures are, but I can remember in my mind going to their homes and them taking pictures of the bruises and saying, ‘We believe you, we believe you.'”
She added, “So in my mind, anytime I question myself about these things, that gift of them showing me what it looks like: ‘Tayla, look at this. You see, this is true. This is true.’ And having that … they’re both gone now. But those two strong women who were old and both single living on a hill — who he hated — standing there saying, ‘This is true and we’re in your corner and we believe you.'”
The “Coal Miner’s Daughter” singer got custody of Tayla when she was 14 — and she recalls it being “such a gift” to know “I’m not lying.”
“I think sometimes we can even convince ourselves that what we are saying is a lie and being able to look back on that and go, ‘No, no’ [is important],” she said.
After she escaped the abuse from her stepfather, Tayla went on to experience her own ups and downs with addiction and substance abuse. In 2021, she told PEOPLE that when Loretta thought she might be falling back into her addiction, her grandmother wouldn’t allow her to get back on the road.
“The way she handled it was, I wasn’t allowed to go on the road,” Tayla said. “Going on the road with her was like heaven to me, being able to be on her bus and eat dinner with her and sit with her in the back after the shows to debrief about the show. That was my favorite thing in the world. But she wouldn’t allow it if I got myself in any trouble.”
She also said it was her grandmother that got her into rehab in 1997 — though it wasn’t until July of 2004 that Tayla got truly sober for the first time.
Now, Tayla is making music with Tre Twitty, whose grandfather was Conway Twitty, and they released their first full-length album, Cookin’ Up Lovin’ in April.
“It was so exciting to sort of do our own thing but stay in the same vein as Conway and Loretta,” Tayla told PEOPLE of the making of the album, which includes three covers of duets made famous by her “Memaw” and Tre’s “Poppy.” “We can be the caretakers of the past and we can carry the flag for our grandparents and their music and their legacy, but we can also write our own chapters and serve as a continuation of what they started in a way.”
“I’m excited to see what the future holds and what our next album’s going to be about,” she added. “And I’m excited to go forth and create our own music.”