Country music fans were shocked when Kelsea Ballerini announced that she and her husband of five years, Morgan Evans, had filed for divorce in August

As she explains on the podcast Tell Me About It With Jade Iovine, you can still love someone but put yourself first. “I’m a 29-year-old woman who got married young to a person I was so deeply in love with, by the way, and I have to honor that even through the mess of it right now. And I just don’t think there’s a lot of stories of women at any age, especially in your 20s just going you’re a good person, I’m a good person. I choose me. And I think that’s confusing to people.”

Kelsea will be keeping busy in 2023 with tour dates in the U.K. before she joins Kenny Chesney’s I Go Back tour.