Clarkson finalized her divorce from Brandon Blackstock in March 2022.
Kelly Clarkson is opening up about how she cared for her mental health amid her divorce from Brandon Blackstock.
During an appearance on the Las Culturistas podcast, Clarkson revealed that she wouldn't have made it through the divorce without the help of antidepressants.
"I am gonna be very honest right now and I have not owned this ever... I looked at my therapist and I just couldn't stop sobbing, and I was like, 'I actually had to cancel something the other day because I couldn't stop crying. I cannot do this,'" Clarkson shared. "It was one of those things where I really had to put my pride aside and like all my childhood issues of whatever. I was on Lexapro for like, I think two months."
She continued, "My thing was, I just can't smile anymore for America right now – I'm not happy and I need help, and it was one of the best lessons, because she kept trying to convince me, 'Girl, you're doing a lot,' and having to balance a lot and trying to put my best foot forward in front of my kids, I was like, 'I can't do it.'"
Clarkson added, "And it was honest to God, the greatest decision ever. I wouldn't have made it [without]. And then by the time you wean off of it, it's like 'OK, I handled what I couldn't handle then, and now I have time and space.'"
Clarkson filed for divorce from Blackstock in June 2020 after nearly seven years of marriage, and the former couple, who share River, 9, and Remington, 7, finalized their divorce in March 2022. The American Idol winner has been candid about the end of their marriage since, even admitting that she leaned on unhealthy habits during their divorce.
"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 while speaking to Zane Lowe on Apple Music 1. "... 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."
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 it may have been a rollercoaster, Clarkson said at the end of the day, both she and her family realized that it's all going to be "fine."
"You feel like 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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