Gwen Stefani has been in the limelight for nearly two decades. But the months that followed the end of her marriage with rock singer Gavin Rossdale left her shell-shocked.
“My life was literally blown up into my face,” she recalled to the New York Times, about the latter half of 2015.
For almost three months, her closest friends had already known about the secret that would cause the disintegration of her 13-year marriage to Bush frontman Gavin Rossdale.
Though Gwen remains adamant about not going into detail (mainly for the sake of her kids) she told the New York Times, “If I could, I would just tell you everything, and you would just be in shock. It’s a really good, juicy story.”
Gwen with ex-husband Gavin when she was pregnant with their first child, Kingston at the 2016 Grammys (photo: NY Daily News)
The tabloids all say the same thing: Gavin had an affair with their kids’ nanny, which had been going on for years.
The 46-year-old singer recounted how she hit rockbottom.“I’m gonna die,” she had thought. “I am dead, actually. How do I save myself? What am I going to do? How do I not go down like this?”
Going back to her first love
As she reeled from the shock and heartbreak, Gwen knew that she needed to go back to her roots, to find herself again. So she returned to her first love: songwriting.
“I have to make music out of this. That’s what God wants for me,” she recalls.
The result of this realization is her first solo album in a decade, “This Is What Truth Feels Like”.
The first single, Used To Love You, is a raw heart-wrenching surprise hit.
Next page: No Doubt, No Regrets
No doubt, no regrets
By the time the band No Doubt, which Gwen co-founded in 1987, was ready to go on hiatus, they had already sold 20 million albums worldwide.
photo: mynameistrendy
In 2004, Gwen released her first solo album, the wacky hip-pop dance record, “Love. Angel. Music. Baby.” which was a massive hit.
She found out she was pregnant with her first son before her first solo tour and by the time he was eight weeks old, she was back in the studio recording her second solo album, “The Sweet Escape”.
Then as she prepared to embark on her second world tour, she found out she was pregnant with her second child.
By this time, Gwen had accomplished a successful foray into fashion and fragrances.
Gwen holding her youngest son Apollo (photo: Starpulse)
She gave birth to her third son, Apollo in 2014. “That’s when I started to really find my faith again,” she recalls. “It’s like a miracle, at my age.”
When Apollo was just a few weeks old, Gwen was tapped to become a coach on the hit talent reality show “The Voice.
“I needed so badly to do something different, and I needed so badly to be in a different role, a giving role,” says Gwen.
Though it was a fresh start, this chapter in her life proved to be bittersweet.
Gwen expressed sadness in the same interview that her three sons Kingston, 9, Zuma, 7, and Apollo, 2 spend half of their time with their dad, calling it “the most unjust, unbelievable system.”
Next page: A New Love
A New Love
She wasn’t expecting that her new job as a coach on “The Voice” would lead her to a new love, sitting two swiveling red chairs down from her.
Gwen with Blake at the Vanity Fair Oscars 2016 party (photo: NY Daily News)
Falling in love with her fellow “The Voice” coach Country singer Blake Shelton was “totally unexpected” but the two hit it off while they were both recovering from messy divorces. (Blake had been in the process of separating from his wife of four years, country singer Miranda Lambert.)
Picking up the pieces but having a blast
Gwen admittedly has to remind herself of how far she’s come just to reawaken her lost self-confidence. “Wow, I did do that! I wrote those songs!”
“I needed something new to happen,” affirms Gwen, who’s enjoying singing about being happy. “And not just in my career, in my life. Something had to change.
“I’m not going to say I’m not still picking up the pieces and every day isn’t a challenge,” she said. “I’m still in shock. But it’s an awesome time.”
READ: Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner are in a ‘good place’ less than a year after divorce
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