Sara Evans‘ Born to Fly memoir is out! The 49-year-old shared her life story in the autobiography, covering the exhilarating highs and painful lows of both her personal and professional life.

“I was approached by the publisher about writing a book,” Sara recalled to Everything Nash. “At first I was like, ‘No, I’m not ready to write an autobiography. I’m not old enough. I’m just not ready to do that yet. because my kids are still young, and I just don’t want to write about stuff that might embarrass them.’ This happens a lot, you keep getting pushed in a direction even though you’re like, ‘That’s not what we discussed!’

“I kept getting pushed towards the memoir part of it,” she continued. “I wanted to write a book called I Don’t Know How She Does It. I wanted to talk about raising three kids on the road, work ethic, how to be a great mom and still have a career, and all kinds of things like that. But they kept pushing towards the memoir stuff and saying, ‘We need more back story. We need more back story about why you are this way and how did you become this way?’ So then I finally just caved and I was like, ‘Fine, I will write a memoir.”

Sara previously hinted that her book would delve into parts of her life she had never shared with anyone before, until now.

“I chose to write about what I thought were important parts of my life,” Sara revealed. “I’ve had four near-death experiences –– very, very near death experiences, and a few of them I’ve never spoken about publicly. So one of them is in this book, which will be really, I think, fascinating and shocking, of what happened to me.”

Sara also speaks fondly about her parents, and how their surprise divorce when she was only 12 impacted her life, as well as the challenges she has had in her own family, after divorcing her first husband, Craig Schelske, later marrying professional football player, Jay Barker.

“I don’t tell every little thing, but I do talk about [their divorce],” Sara admitted. “I talk about my difficult relationship with my dad. It’s taken four years really to write it. So a lot is different. We don’t live with all the seven kids anymore. All Jay’s kids are grown. Avery lives on his own. It’s really just me and Jay and my daughters in the home now. So that’s a lot different. Both my girls do online school. I did give a lot of parenting advice. I give a lot of advice about marriage.

“I talk about how I’m a really old-fashioned wife, and I believe in being a sweet wife and not just bitching all the time and how the mother sets the tone in the house,” she added. “And so, on one hand it’s really light, but there are a few stories that are really shocking.”

Both Born to Fly and Sara’s latest album, Copy That, are available for purchase via Sara’s website.