Gwen Stefani has opened up about how she’s still coping with the aftermath of her divorce from her ex-husband Gavin Rossdale, describing the moment they split for good as like having her dreams “shattered”.

The former No Doubt singer, 46, who is currently dating Blake Shelton and in the middle of a North American tour, spoke about her divorce and her new relationship in the August edition of Harper’s Bazaar.

“My dreams were shattered,” she recalled about the moment she parted ways with Rossdale, 50, her husband of nearly 14 years last summer. “All I wanted my whole life was to have babies, be married, like what my parents have.”

Gwen StefaniGwen Stefani with her youngest son, Apollo, in June 2016

For her, the hardest part of the ordeal was having split custody of her three children – Kingston, 10, Zuma, 7, and Apollo, 2 – with Rossdale. “It was so insane because not only did my family break up, but then my kids are taken away like half the time, so that was really like, 'What?! What did I do?'”

Naturally, Stefani grieved for her old relationship, in which she had invested the best part of two decades of her life.

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“Of course you go through the 'Why me?' and feel sorry for yourself,” she said. “But then I was like, 'No, this happened to me already and I made something good out of it,' and that was Tragic Kingdom [No Doubt's 1995 album].”

Her latest album, This Is What the Truth Feels Like, her first in 10 years, topped the charts earlier in 2016. While its title promises autobiographical details, she’s held back elements of her private life because she doesn’t want to air too much dirty laundry in public for the sake of her three sons.

Gwen Stefani Blake SheltonGwen Stefani with her current boyfriend Blake Shelton

“It's because I have children,” she explains. “As a famous person, you start to think, 'I can't say all that because I'll embarrass them or hurt them in some way’. And especially now because they can see everything and hear everything. But I've done nothing I'm ashamed of… Well, we all have a few things we're ashamed of.”

Finally, she spoke of the happiness she’s found with country music star and ‘The Voice’ judge Blake Shelton.

“It was like being handed this gift of a friend who was going through the exact same thing at the exact same time,” referring to Shelton’s recent divorce from Miranda Lambert. “And then everything flipped. It went from horrible to, like, hopeful and like, 'Wow, God, you just don't know what's gonna happen next’.”

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