Rachel Stevens, who skyrocketed to fame as a part of S Club 7, has opened up about her guilt over the impact her marriage breakdown had on her children, and how she navigated managing a blended family. On HELLO!'s Second Act podcast with Ateh Jewel, the 47-year-old spoke about "grieving" the end of her marriage, "rebuilding" the foundations of her life, the psychological toll that being a teen idol took on her, and doing everything she can to be the "best mum" while handling everything else.
Struggles after divorce
Speaking to Ateh, the S Club 7 singer explained that "disappointment" was the hardest thing after her divorce from Alex Bourne, to whom she was married between 2009 and 2022: "That's one of the heaviest feelings for sure," she said. "Like, 'Oh my goodness, I'm so disappointed, I just did not think it was going to go this way'." Rachel found herself feeling "angry and sad and wound up", and had to find her own way of coping, adding: "On my way home from drop off, I put my hand on my heart and thought, 'I'm just gonna embrace it'.
"I sat there, and I actually cried," she continued. "I was like, 'Oh God, I needed to release that feeling'." However, it isn't so simple – releasing her emotion didn't always make things necessarily easier for Rachel, as she also had to consider the effect the situation had on her kids. "Sometimes I feel guilty for feeling sad or feeling angry because I don't want them to see," she said. "I'm hurt, and feeling pain and anger and sadness."
The mother-of-two explained that she struggles to find the balance between being vulnerable with her kids and sheltering them from her pain: "I'm such a bloody contradiction, because, on one hand, my heart is shut down, locked down, but then around my kids the walls come down, the tears come and all the feelings come, but it's so hard.
"I want to show them that it's important to feel," Rachel shared. "Sometimes we try and protect our kids, but it's not protecting our kids. We just want them to be happy, and that's not realistic and that's not life."
Trying to be the perfect mum
Like many parents, the 47-year-old felt the pressure to be the perfect mum to her two children, who are 15 and 11, even when she was going through her own struggles. Rachel told Ateh: "I always want to just do my best and be the best mum I can be, and stop giving myself a hard time. I'm calmer, definitely, and I'm trying to be more open."
The constant striving for perfection can be self-destructive, and, for Rachel, discovering that she was allowed to make mistakes was revelatory: "I think it's so easy as mums and as women to keep going, and doing for everyone, and people pleasing, and being perfect, and trying to get everything right without dropping the balls. And, actually, we're gonna drop the balls," she continued.
The TV personality shared how self-care is really the only way to sustain yourself as a parent: "We've got to be the ones to nurture ourselves," she said. "In life, we feel like we have to be everything to everyone, and I don't think we're gonna get what we need externally. We want to be perfect doing our meditation in the morning, we want to be perfect getting a good protein breakfast in the morning, but sometimes, especially with kids, you never know what you're gonna get from day to day."