Perhaps there was one heartbreak too many for country music star Mindy McCready.

Authorities in Arkansas said McCready died Sunday of a suspected self-inflicted gunshot to the head. She was 37, the mother of two young sons.

McCready was found on the same porch where David Wilson, her longtime boyfriend and the father of her youngest son, is believed to have shot himself a month ago.

"I just keep telling myself that the more suffering that I go through, the greater character I'll have," McCready told NBC after his death.

McCready had tried to kill herself at least three times since 2005. Her death ended a series of tumultuous public events that marked much of her adult life.

"I call my life a beautiful mess and organized chaos," she told The Associated Press in 2010. "It's just always been like that. My entire life, things have been attracted to me, and vice versa, that turn into chaotic nightmares, or I create the chaos myself. I think that's really the life of a celebrity, of a big, huge, giant personality."

Wilson's death was the most difficult moment in a life full of them. McCready issued a statement last month lamenting it, and she called him her soul mate.

Asked whether she and Wilson had argued about an affair and if she'd shot him, she told NBC, "Oh, my God. No. Oh, my God. No. He was my life. We were each other's life."

It's unclear what immediate circumstances led to McCready taking her own life, but it appears she was struggling again with twin issues that have persisted for years — substance abuse and the custody of her children.

She checked into court-ordered rehab and gave her children up to foster care earlier this month after her father asked a judge to intervene, saying she'd stopped taking care of herself and her sons and was abusing alcohol and prescription drugs.

It's not clear where her sons, 6-year-old Zander and infant Zayne, were Sunday.

A deputy stationed outside McCready's home Sunday night referred questions to the Cleburne County sheriff, who was unavailable.

News of McCready's death spread quickly on Twitter, with major country stars paying their respects.

Carrie Underwood said: "I grew up listening to Mindy McCready...so sad for her family tonight. Many prayers are going out to them..."

Melinda Gayle McCready arrived in Nashville in 1994 still in her teens with tapes of her karaoke vocals and earned a recording contract with BNA Records. She had a few memorable moments professionally, scoring her first No. 1 hit almost immediately.

"Guys Do It All the Time," a self-assured dig at male chauvinism, endeared her to female fans in 1996. She also scored a hit with "Ten Thousand Angels," and her album of that title sold 2 million copies.

Beyond that, she's mostly remembered for a string of dramatic moments as she spent the next 15 years chasing another huge hit. Her problems included a custody battle with her mother over one of her sons, arrests, overdoses and discord in her love life.

She tried to get help in an unusual way, joining the cast of "Celebrity Rehab 3" with Dr. Drew Pinsky. McCready came off as a sympathetic figure during the show's run. Pinsky called her an "angel" and in an interview in 2010 said it appeared McCready was doing "rather well."

Pinsky helped treat McCready for love addiction on the show and said he'd referred her to professionals who could continue to help her afterward.

"A love addict basically is somebody that really didn't have a good model for intimacy in their childhood, often times traumatized in one way or another, thereby intimacy becomes a risk place, becomes an intolerable place," Pinsky said. "And so what they tend to do is attach themselves to idealized, bigger-than-life, unavailable others."

McCready suffered a seizure in one of the show's scarier moments. Tests showed she has suffered brain damage, something she attributed to her abusive relationship with another country star.

In the months after her stint, McCready said she found some peace, telling The Associated Press in early 2010 that she hoped to get her career restarted. She'd just met Wilson and talked openly about their relationship, although the producer and musician declined to speak on the record.

"I've never had a relationship like that before where we started completely as friends," she said. "It turned into friends really caring about each other and then it turned into love, and I've never had that happen before."