Doing what’s best for her. Kelly Clarkson opened up about the difficult choice she made when she decided to divorce Brandon Blackstock.
“[Divorce] rips you apart,” the “Stronger” songstress, 40, explained during her Monday, March 13, appearance on the “Angie Martinez IRL” podcast. “Whenever you fall in love with someone — and it doesn’t work.”
Clarkson and Blackstock, 46, called it quits in June 2020 after nearly seven years of marriage. The “Since You Been Gone” songstress filed for divorce at the time, citing “irreconcilable differences” as the reason for the split. The former American Idol winner reflected on the tough choice she made nearly three years later.
“I think the thing about divorce — especially having it publicized, and people thinking they know the whole thing — the hardest part of that is, like, it wasn’t an overnight decision,” she recalled. “Anyone that’s been divorced [knows]. That was years in trying to make — not make it work, cause I never wanted to be part of something to make it work. I wanted to make it beautiful. I wanted to make it awesome. I wanted to make it everything it possibly could be, and sometimes that just doesn’t happen.”
The Grammy winner’s latest podcast appearance isn’t the first time she’s shared how difficult it was for her to end things with her ex.
“You can ask anyone who’s gone through a divorce, I don’t think anyone expects it,” Clarkson told Hoda Kotb during an interview on Today in September 2020. “You see yourself growing old with someone and then life has a different path. It’s so hard on everyone, and you know me, I’m really open. I try to be open and share … It’s just a tricky thing to navigate.”
At the time of the couple’s separation, a source exclusively told Us Weekly that the Texas natives “clashed on so many levels and being in quarantine together [amid the coronavirus pandemic] heightened their problems to the point of no return.”
The Voice coach and her estranged husband had a messy split amid their proceedings which included a lengthy legal battle over their Montana home. Clarkson was legally declared single in September 2021 and the divorce was finalized six months later.
Clarkson shares two children, daughter River Rose, 8, and son Remington, 6, with the talent manager. The Kelly Clarkson Show host admitted that her little ones have had a hard time coping with their parents’ split. Blackstock, for his part, also shares daughter Savannah and son Seth with ex-wife Melissa Ashworth.
“I literally ask my kids every night when we’re snuggling, ‘Are you happy? And if you’re not, what could make you happier?’” she said during the Monday podcast interview. “Sometimes they’ll say — especially the past two years — a lot of it — and it kills me — and I want them to be honest, so I don’t ever say, ‘Oh God, don’t tell me that.’ But a lot of times it would be like, ‘You know, I’m just really sad. I wish Mommy and Daddy were in the same house.’ And they’re really honest about it.”
