The singer finalized her divorce from Brandon Blackstock last year.
Kelly Clarkson is opening up about how she handled her divorce. While speaking to Zane Lowe on Apple Music 1, the 41-year-old singer admitted that she had some "unhealthy habits" amid her split from Brandon Blackstock.
Clarkson filed for divorce from Blackstock in June 2020 after nearly seven years of marriage. The former couple, who share River, 9, and Remington, 7, finalized their divorce in March 2022.
"I don't know how people get through anything like that because I'm not going to say I did it gracefully. Behind closed doors by myself, it was not," she admitted. "... Just to be brutally honest, I did not handle it well."
"I had many sessions with just my friends of... I couldn't even speak. I was crying so hard… even before separating," Clarkson continued. "There were just a lot of now unhealthy habits you recognize or habits that you recognize that you didn't see before. Hindsight is a lot easier."
Before Clarkson and Blackstock called it quits they went to marriage counseling in an effort to try "to make it work." However, Clarkson said, she "knew in my heart it just wasn't going to."
"I think when you finally go, 'I can't fix this. I can't,' there's no amount of hope that will, or trying or whatever. It actually is freeing," she said. "It's incredibly sad. It's a dark place, and fetal position on the floor crying. There's so much loss with that and I'd never experienced grief like that, but I also think it's very freeing."
"Then we have two little kids watching us," Clarkson added. "And you don't want to set that example for, this is what they're going to set the bar for. I'm like, I don't want my kids to be in this relationship. I want them to aim higher."
Though therapy didn't help them as a couple, it was good for Clarkson individually.
"It's very helpful to have a trained professional that knows how to navigate you through rough seas," she said. "And it's a rollercoaster."
While on that rollercoaster, Clarkson said "the worst part" was the public aspect of her split.
"No matter what I said to my friends, no one got... it being so public, misinformation, what things that were right, and then people talk to you about, and you want to scream at the top of your lungs," she said. "No one knows that, and I don't know theirs. Whatever theirs is, you can't experience full-on what someone else is experiencing. And it's very isolating."
Still, Clarkson learned to find "a little tinge" of humor in the dark moments, which became an "escape" for her.
"You feel like everything you're going to mess up your children. You're going to mess up your whole life. Everything is so huge," she said. "And now three years later, even from separation, it's like, you know what? I was like, 'Yes, it is important. And yes, it was what it was. But at the end of the day, we're all fine. We're doing fine. Everybody's finding their own lane and we're figuring it out and it's going to be fine.'"
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