Gwen Stefani ‘Didn’t Know How to Protect My Kids’ After Divorce (Exclusive)

After weathering a storm of heartbreak, Gwen Stefani found a new love that blossomed.

The pop icon releases his fourth solo album, BouquetFriday, November 15. Naturally, matters of the heart inspired her latest record.

“The last four years of my life I got engaged, then I got married and started my life over,” says Stefani, 55, who tied the knot with country superstar Blake Shelton, 48, in 2021 after nearly six years together.

On Bouquet the three-time Grammy winner unpacks the aftermath of her 2016 divorce from Bush rocker Gavin Rossdale, 59, and shares the joy she’s found building a new world with their three sons Kingston, 18, Zuma, 16, and Apollo, 10, and with Shelton.

“Something that I’ve wanted since I was a little girl is to get married and have the love that I saw my parents have and have babies. That dream was completely destroyed; it was shattered and I had to find out of how to move on and make a new dream,” she says, “and God putting Blake in my life was just that miracle.”

Stefani and Rossdale split in 2015 after 20 years together, and their split was devastating.

“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 (kids) and they made us feel like we were too them,” Stefani says. “And when you have a family and it’s the opposite of that, it falls apart… I didn’t know what to do or how to protect my kids. And I’m still working on that.”

On her new single “Somebody Else’s,” Stefani apparently references her and Rossdale’s split, 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 mine heart / You’re someone else’s / And I pray for them, whoever they are.”

Stefani admits she’s putting “a lot out there” with the record and that she feels protective of her children, but she also feels an obligation as an artist to share her truth with her fans.

“I received the songs. Do I sit there in the studio and work on them? I do. But it’s like, where does it come from? Where does the inspiration come from? Where do these words come from? They do, they come to me, but they is given to me,” she says. “So I feel like it’s my responsibility, whether I have kids or not, to share it. It’s a gift to me that I share with people. And I definitely think there are certain songs that they don’t mean the same things to me as they would mean to someone else because no one is in my brain or in my heart or in my soul, they will have a different experience through the song.

Ultimately, her children know what’s going on in their own family and their own lives, Stefani adds, “and what’s right and what’s true.”

For more on Gwen Stefani, pick up the new issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands everywhere this Friday.