Gwen Stefani 'Didn't Know How to Protect My Kids' After Divorce: My 'Dream' Was 'Crushed' (Exclusive)

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

The pop icon will release her fourth solo album, Bouquet, on Friday, Nov. 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 in building a new world with their three sons Kingston, 18, Zuma, 16, and Apollo, 10, and with Shelton.

“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,” she says, “and God putting Blake in my life was just that miracle.”

Stefani and Rossdale separated 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 [children], and they made us feel like we were everything to them," Stefani says. "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 her new single "Somebody Else's," Stefani seemingly 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 my heart / You’re somebody else’s / And I pray for them whoever they are."

Stefani acknowledges that she puts "a lot out there" with the record and that she of course feels protective of her children, but she also feels a duty 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 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 says. "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."

Ultimately, her kids "know what's going on in their own family and their own life," Stefani adds, "and what's real and what's true."

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