The most decorated country music performer in history, a loving wife, and a mother of six, Loretta Lynn had quite the ride.

She lived in extreme poverty as a child in the coal-mining hills of Kentucky; according to rumors, her mother used Sears catalog pages as wallpaper.

It took the daughter of a coal miner some time before she realized where babies came from because she married Oliver “Mooney” Lynn when she was just 16 years old.

The most decorated country music performer in history, a loving wife, and a mother of six, Loretta Lynn had quite the ride.

She lived in extreme poverty as a child in the coal-mining hills of Kentucky; according to rumors, her mother used Sears catalog pages as wallpaper.It took the daughter of a coal miner some time before she realized where babies came from because she married Oliver “Mooney” Lynn when she was just 16 years old.

”The winters were cold, so my mommy glued newspapers and pages from old Sears Roebuck catalogs to the wall to help keep the cold out. We didn’t have money for wallpaper, but my mommy made that old house stay warm and beautiful,” Loretta said.

When she was barely 16 years old and he was 21 years old, she married her first husband, Oliver “Doolittle” Lynn. Loretta was a young stay-at-home mom, and her husband supported the family by working as a logger.

The family ultimately made the decision to relocate from Kentucky to Custer, Washington, a logging town. It was there that Loretta started feeling ill in the mornings without knowing why. She made the decision to see her doctor, who then instructed her to remove her clothes.

”I just pulled the sheet over my head, like an ostrich. When he was done, Doc told me I could get dressed again. After that, he put his arm around my waist and he said, ’Honey, your trouble is, you’re pregnant,” Loretta explained in her book “Loretta Lynn: Coal Miner’s Daughter”.

The young, innocent Loretta, who was still a minor at the time, was shocked by the news. She stated that she had no idea what being pregnant entailed or how children were created.

“I never knew where babies came from until it happened to me,” she once famously said.

In December 1949, Jack, her first child, was born. His birth narrative reveals a lot about Loretta and her family’s living situation. Just a few hours after giving birth to Jack, Loretta left for home because she couldn’t afford to stay overnight at the hospital.

After having her second child, Loretta lost two pregnancies. Unfortunately, the second miscarriage led to blood poisoning, and once more she was unable to pay for medical attention. She did manage to survive, although it wasn’t by much.

Despite everything, Loretta kept becoming pregnant. Medical professionals advised Cesarean section for Loretta, who was expecting her third child. She had to get her husband’s approval in order to proceed, which presented a difficulty.

Surprisingly, she couldn’t sign her own consent form because she was still a minor. Since her husband Doolittle was out in the woods working, this became to be a significant issue. After spending days in the hospital, Loretta finally gave birth to her child naturally, and everything went smoothly.

“Doo called in from some logging camp and they kept teasing him. First they said it was a boy, then a girl, then a boy again. But it was a boy, and we named him Ernest Ray,” Loretta said.

Loretta had four kids before turning 20. Because of the family’s precarious financial circumstances, she hardly ever left the house as a stay-at-home mother.But her husband enjoyed drinking beer and going out with his buddies.

Sadly, he met other ladies while going against Loretta’s wishes. Despite his repeated infidelity, Loretta stayed completely dedicated to her husband, which was something that not all women in her situation would have done.

”I married Doo when I wasn’t but a child, and he was my life from that day on,” Lynn later wrote in her 2002 memoir Still Woman Enough.

“But as important as my youth and upbringing was, there’s something else that made me stick to Doo. He thought I was something special, more special than anyone else in the world, and never let me forget it. That belief would be hard to shove out the door. Doo was my security, my safety net.

“Doo was a good man and a hard worker. But he was an alcoholic, and it affected our marriage all the way through.”

Loretta’s tumultuous marriage’s early years of joy and sorrow would later serve as inspiration for her songwriting, so at least some good came from it.