Gwen Stefani Says She Didn't Know How to 'Protect' Her Kids After 'Crushing' Gavin Rossdale Divorce: 'I'm Still Working on That'

Gwen Stefani is getting candid about how going through her divorce from Gavin Rossdale affected her three kids: Kingston, 18, Zuma, 16, and Apollo, 10, on her new solo album, Bouquet, which will release on Friday, November 15.

“Something that I wanted since I was a little girl is to be married and have this love that I saw my parents have and have babies. That dream was completely ruined; it was crushed, and I had to figure out how I was going to move forward and make a new dream, and God putting Blake [Shelton] in my life was just that miracle," the singer, 55, said in a new interview. “The last four years of my life, I got engaged, then I got married and started my life over."

"Especially growing up with this perfect example of love between my parents. They met when they were 15, and they fell in love, and then they had us [children], and they made us feel like we were everything to them," Stefani continued. "And when you have a family and it's the opposite of that, it breaks up ... I didn't know what to do or how to protect my children. And I'm still working on that."

On the new single "Somebody Else's," the blonde babe, who married the country star, 48, in 2021, refers to the hard period in her life, singing: "Now that I’ve found the real thing / You don’t compare / And I don’t care that you’re somebody else’s / And it doesn’t even break my heart / You’re somebody else’s / And I pray for them whoever they are."

While writing the album, Stefani put it all out there, but she said her kids know what "is real and what's true."

"I received the songs. Do I sit there in the studio and work on them? I do. But it's like, where does that come from? Where does the inspiration come from? Where do these words come from? They do, they come to me, but they're given to me," she said. "So I feel like it's my responsibility, whether I have children or not children, to share that. It's a gift to me that I'm sharing with people. And I definitely think that there's certain songs that they don't mean the same thing to me as they would mean to somebody else, because nobody's in my brain or in my heart or in my soul. They're going to have a different experience through the song."

While the mom-of-three is happy with Shelton, Rossdale, 59, has also moved on, as he's dating Xhoana Xheneti.

The two recently made a rare public appearance at the 2024 MTV EMAs. The duo, who have been dating since 2023, walked the red carpet at the event on Sunday, November 10.

People spoke to Stefani.