Kelly Clarkson opens up about her divorce: 'My life has been a little bit of a dumpster'

In June, the former American Idol champ filed for divorce from husband Brandon Blackstock after nearly seven years of marriage; Clarkson cited “irreconcilable differences” in the filing. Now the 38-year-old — who shares two children, 6-year-old River Rose and 4-year-old Remington, with Blackstock — is opening up about the split in a new interview with Sunday TODAY.

"I mean, it's no secret," she told Willie Geist on NBC’s Sunday morning news show. "My life has been a little bit of a dumpster ... personally, it's been a little hard the last couple months.

"I've been talking to friends that have been through divorce. I don't know how people go through that without having some kind of outlet because it is the worst thing ever for everyone involved."
 

Her relationship woes have helped inspire her next album, out next year. Clarkson says that pouring her heart out through music has been “very therapeutic.”

“This'll probably be the most personal one I've ever released," she told Geist of the album. "And the whole record is basically every emotion you experience from the beginning of a relationship to the end of what it is now or where it is now, and it's been very therapeutic for me."

Her son and daughter are already fans — though the talk show host admits to feeling “weird” about them singing along to songs about her marriage to their father, whom she wed in 2013.

"It's very honest,” she shared. “There's one that my kids sing in the car. I'm going through mixes, and I'm just, like, 'This is weird.' Like, it's your relationship. I've never written about my life to where my kids are singing along."

Clarkson — who thanked her ex in her Daytime Emmy acceptance speech this summer — also addressed her split in a recent interview with the Los Angeles Times, explaining that she’s being reticent out of respect for her children and Blackstock’s two older children from a previous relationship.

“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,” she told the newspaper.

"I think that I will navigate a way in which to be open and honest about it eventually, probably via [her talk 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.”

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