Tim McGraw Opens up About Domestic Abuse His Mom Suffered During His Childhood

Tim McGraw‘s mom, Betty Trimble, became pregnant with him when she was a senior in high school, and McGraw has been open about the fact that he didn’t have an easy childhood. During a recent conversation with Blair Garner of The Blair Garner Show, the Louisiana native recalled the domestic abuse his mom endured when he was a kid, responding to Garner’s question about a moment McGraw realized his mom’s strength.

“There was a lot of moments because my mom was a strong woman and she raised us three kids and went through a lot of abuse in her marriages,” McGraw said. “So we saw a lot of that growing up and saw a lot of the black eyes and bloody noses and all that thing around our house.” Garner also asked McGraw whether he attempted to intervene during an episode of abuse toward his mother, to which the singer responded in the affirmative: “I got beat up a couple of times trying to get in the middle of it. Yeah, for sure.”

The 53-year-old also recounted one specific moment when he was at home one night when he was around 13 years old. “I got up late at night, it’s about two in the morning, and my mom had worked like three jobs at a time to try to keep the bills paid,” McGraw shared. “And I remember specifically getting up one night to go get a glass of water and she was at our kitchen table, and she had bills spread out everywhere. She had her head down, she was crying and she didn’t see me walk by. I didn’t know what to say. It was just so heartbreaking to me and it’s sort of… I don’t know that I really got it at that point. But older in life, I reflect on that a lot. I reflect on that scene and seeing my mom and how she hid that from us. And I just happened to catch that moment.”

McGraw recently celebrated his mom with his new single, “I Called Mama,” the cover art for which features a photo of Trimble as a teenager. “Everybody has that,” McGraw said when Garner referred to moms as an “anchor.” “Even if your mom’s not around, it could be somebody else, it could have been your brother or your dad, whoever. This song is sort of a metaphor about the people in your life that are really important. It’s pointed at mom, because that’s what’s important for me, it spoke to me and I think it’s important to a lot of people, but I think if you look at it from a 30,000 feet view, it’s really about a bigger picture.”