Why Kelly Clarkson Isn’t Talking About Her Divorce from Brandon Blackstock
From the moment that the divorce filing of Kelly Clarkson and Brandon Blackstock went public in June, it’s been fairly evident that Clarkson has wanted to keep things private.
And now we know the real reason why.
“I am a very open person, but I’m not going to be able to be truly open about this in certain aspects because there’s kids involved,” Clarkson says in a new interview with the Los Angeles Times. “I think that I will navigate a way in which to be open and honest about it eventually, probably via the show, and it’ll probably, I’m assuming, happen organically when someone says something in conversation or something. It definitely wouldn’t be planned. But my children and his older children — there are a lot of little hearts involved in this and while people feel, ‘Oh my gosh, what a loss ...’ imagine how it is in the epicenter of the storm. It’s a lot to process and deal with, just as a family. So because it’s not just me, I probably won’t go too deep with it.”
It’s a slippery slope for the host of the Kelly Clarkson Show, who has long made a career not only from her musical talents, but the way she seems to open up so easily.
But it sounds as if Clarkson and Blackstock will be doing their best to keep things quiet, and so far, they agree on custody of their 5-year-old daughter, River Rose, and 4-year-old son, Remington. Both Clarkson and Blackstock are currently seeking legal and joint physical custody of their children, and she has filed documents in court asking to keep all details of their divorce private.
However, Clarkson admits that it’s going to be quite difficult to keep the pain of her divorce out of her future music.
“It’s funny, I actually told my therapist recently, ‘I have no idea how one goes through any kind of huge life change, like a divorce, that doesn’t have some kind of an outlet,’” says Clarkson, whose last album was 2017’s Meaning of Life. “I am very lucky. Even from my childhood, my mom told me I had a problem expressing my emotions and all these things when I was really young and that I should start writing. So that’s me expressing it. I usually leave it in the songs and that’s usually my therapy.”
And yes, it still hurts.
“It’s just like people dealing with the pandemic,” she continues. “Some days are fine, you’re laughing about it and there’s comedic things about it — in a dark comedy kind of way — but then there are other times that are so low that you just don’t know if you’re going to get picked back up. And then there’s other times when you’re like, ‘OK, fresh start.’ ... I’m incapable of not incorporating it into my music because that is my outlet.”
The couple had been married since 2013. Clarkson filed for divorce in Los Angeles on June 4, 2020, citing irreconcilable differences. Blackstock responded to Clarkson's divorce petition in court documents he filed on July 21.
Clarkson and Blackstock listed two mansions in Nashville and Los Angeles for sale in the months before she filed for divorce. They have since retracted the listing for their Los Angeles home, and Clarkson appears to have been staying there after news broke of their divorce. On June 13, the UK's Daily Mail published the first pictures of Clarkson in public since the news of their split, showing her walking her dog in her neighborhood in Los Angeles.
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