Country star Miranda Lambert had plenty of songwriting fodder for her tunes of heartbreak, domestic violence, cheating and tough love growing up - her parents offered victims of domestic abuse sanctuary at their ministry.
The White Liar singer reveals she was often woken up in the middle of the night by the scared children of beaten mothers, who had come to sleep in her bedroom.
And while she never experienced abuse at home, the stories she heard from those her parents helped shelter in Lindale, Texas fuelled the tough lyrics she now sings in her hit songs.
In a new Behind The Music TV special, which debuted in America on Wednesday (13Jul11), the Kerosene hitmaker said, "We took in abused women and their kids for a long time. I've shared my room many a night at two in the morning... (The girl's) mum would be there with a black eye. It was real.
"These people were coming to us at the worst and lowest points of their lives; their kids watched their dad beat their mum. You don't get more real than that when she's (mother) sitting there with tears running down her face and mascara everywhere at three in the morning and her daughter's gotta go to school the next day. It's a bad deal.
"A lot of that fuelled who I am as an artist."