The past couple years haven’t exactly been easy for Kelly Clarkson. As most of you probably know, she went through a fairly nasty divorce with her ex-husband, Brandon Blackstock, in 2020. So not only did she have to deal with parenting in a pandemic, she also had to deal with parenting while going through a divorce in a pandemic.
In a new cover story with Variety, the 40-year-old singer/talk show host revealed a valuable lesson she learned while in therapy.
I think the most important thing I’ve learned in therapy, especially through this divorce, is ‘Don’t hide everything from your kids. Obviously, don’t talk about stuff that you shouldn’t talk about, but it’s okay if they see you cry, or it’s okay if they see you’ve had a bad day,’ You start to feel that kind of shame, like, ‘I’ve got to put my best foot forward as a mom because I don’t want them to be affected.’ But then you allow your kids to express empathy.
It’s certainly a fine balance. You don’t want to hide everything from your kids. You want them to see that everyone is human and bad days are okay. But at the same time, you don’t want to overwhelm them with your own fears and worries.
Being a parent is not easy.
Clarkson also revealed she is constantly worried she’s not spending enough time with her two kids, but her own mother helped calm her worries.
My mom, I did call her once — this was years ago — and I was like, ‘Do I see my kids enough?’ And she was like, ‘Oh, my God, Kelly, you see your kids way more than I saw you!’ A lot of people don’t have the means, so I’m very fortunate.
She added that she made the decision to push back the time of her NBC talk show by 30 minutes so she could drop her kids off at school every morning. It was an important move to make because she’s not able to pick them up from school in the afternoon. She needed the mornings, at least.
The scheduling can get tricky, but I have such a great team: Everyone at NBC is amazing, and everybody wants everyone to be successful. It’s really helpful to have that type of unity in your environment at work. There are a lot of parents at the talk show and at The Voice and at my label. And there are a lot of women.
