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Kelsea Ballerini Gets Real About Choosing Her Career Over Starting A Family With Incredibly Vulnerable New Song, “I Sit In Parks”
Speaking her truth.
This week, Kelsea Ballerini released an incredibly honest song about the failed expectations of where her life is right now with “I Sit In Parks.” Solely written by Ballerini, she lays it all out there in terms of admitting that her life isn’t exactly where she thought it would be at 32-years-old, or maybe even more so, she struggles with wondering if the path she’s chosen in terms of her big career has been the right one.
Of course, Ballerini went through a very public divorce from fellow country artist Morgan Evans in 2022, and she put out a very revealing EP called Rolling Up the Welcome Mat, which is six-song project she released in February of 2023 that told everything from her perspective.
She previously said on a 2023 episode of the Call Her Daddy podcast that her five-year long marriage to Evans never got to the point where she was ready to have kids with him:
“That was something that we had talked about early on, and that was something that I was changing on. Cause he was ready. He was like, ‘I don’t want to be an old dad,’ is what he kept saying. And I was like, ‘I’m not there yet, and I can’t do that to save this and give you something that I’m not ready for.'”
She eventually looked into freezing her eggs, though she didn’t tell him about the visit, and over dinner, she told him she wanted to freeze her eggs when she turned 30, which was still a year and a half out:
“It was not a good day. And I think that was when I was like, there’s a fundamental difference here that has happened, that has shifted. And it’s no longer like, I don’t see this person, I miss this person, I’m alone, I’m lonely. It’s like, he wants something out of life… [and] I’m not there.
And whether I’ll get there or not, I don’t think it’s with this person if it is. And I think internally in hindsight, that’s where I went like, ‘I think maybe we need to rethink this, Kels.'”
Though Ballerini has since been linked to actor Chase Stokes, they have reportedly split, and it sounds like Ballerini isn’t holding back in terms of admitting that maybe she has made some wrong decisions.
“I Sit In Parks” is the first release from her forthcoming Mount Pleasant EP that’s slated to drop on Friday, November 14th, and while I’ve never really been a huge fan of her music (there was some good stuff on Rolling Up the Welcome Mat), this new song is absolutely brilliant. Every now and then, a song just stops you in your tracks in terms of the sheer vulnerability, and I think this is a topic so many young women in particular can relate to.
She opens about sitting in a park, watching all of the young families hanging out and realizing that her Saturday’s look much different than many other people her age:
“I sit in parks, it breaks my heart
‘Cause I see just how far I am from the things that I want
Dad brought the picnic, Mom brought the sunscreen
Two kids are laughing and crying on red swings
We look about the same age
But we don’t have same Saturdays”
She continues, wondering if she missed an opportunity to become a mom, instead choosing to chase a music career, though she clearly knows that her “body clock” has been ticking the whole time and it’s all hitting her that maybe she picked the less important thing in the long run:
“Did I miss it? By now, is it
A lucid dream? Is it my fault
For chasing things a body clock
Doesn’t wait for? I did the damn tour
It’s what I wanted, what I got
I spun around and then I stopped
And wonder if I missed the mark”
Ballerini imagines a nursery with “Noah’s Ark” as she watches a couple play with their baby on a blanket in the park she’s at, and she ponders the idea that the woman who is the mom could possibly feel the same way about her, wondering if “she wants my freedom like I wanna be a mother.”
That’s a helluva line…
The line where she quips that she must be doing something right, though, because Rolling Stone is giving her high praise for the music she’s putting out… but obviously something is still off because she continues to “refill my Lexapro” and wonder if she’ll ever get to fulfill her true desire to become a mom:
“So I sit in parks, sunglasses dark
And I hit the vape, hallucinate a nursery with Noah’s Ark
They lay on a blanket and goddamit he loves her
I wonder if she wants my freedom like I wanna be a mother
But Rolling Stone says I’m on the right road
So I refill my Lexapro, thinkin'”
I was blown away with the lyrics and how sincere and truly raw they are, because this is such an important topic that I actually don’t hear rarely, if ever, in modern country music. So many women in the modern age struggle with this exact scenario, and it’s true, it really does feel like there’s a trade off… you pick career or family, and it feels nearly impossible to have it all a lot of the time.
Though it’s incredibly nuanced, as she points out with the line about wondering if the mom she’s watching wants her freedom back, and I think that’s a really important part of the song. The grass isn’t always greener, but when you have such a deep desire to be a mom and have a family, and it feels like you’re the only one who can’t manage to figure that part of life out, it can be pretty soul-crushing.
Of course, she’s had an incredibly successful career and seems to have it all from the out side looking in, but clearly she’s searching for something more and I commend her for putting this song out and admitting to feelings and struggles that are incredibly difficult to admit and talk about.
If the rest of this project is anything like “I Sit In Parks,” I think we’re in for something really special and I will certainly be checking it out because this is easily the best song Kelsea has ever put out in my humble opinion, and I am blown away with it. These are the kinds of songs that make country music so incredible.
Kelsea was also just nominated for Best Contemporary Country Album at the 2026 Grammys for her most recent album, Patterns, but I think this song already deserves an award… it’s phenomenal:
“I Sit In Parks”
The post Kelsea Ballerini Gets Real About Choosing Her Career Over Starting A Family With Incredibly Vulnerable New Song, “I Sit In Parks” first appeared on Whiskey Riff.
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