Lily Allen has said she entered a treatment centre for therapy to be her “strongest self” for her children amid reports of her split with David Harbour.
Stranger Things actor Harbour, 49, married Allen, 39, in 2020, and they had been living together in New York.
Last month, she took a break from her Miss Me? podcast with her friend, presenter Miquita Oliver, where they catch up with each other and discuss the biggest cultural moments of the week, because she was “spiralling” and “really not in a good place”.
Returning to the BBC Sounds show, Allen said: “I went into a treatment centre for a few weeks, which was great. I did lots of group therapy and some like individual therapy.
“I needed some time and space away from everything, and I did a lot of shadow work… lots of work about my inner child stuff.
“It was not easy by any stretch. And it’s a journey, it’s a life-long journey of healing. It’s not a quick fix.
“But I’ve started meditating, I mediate every day now, at least two or three times a day, that’s really helping me.”
During the episode, Allen also said that “people think I hate my children” Ethel Mary and Marnie Rose, her daughters with ex-husband Sam Cooper.
“I absolutely adore my children and I’m in a situation now where I really have to be my strongest self for them,” Allen said.
“I felt like it was getting harder and harder for me to be able to show up for them in the way that they need me to.
“It was a big decision to have to leave them for a few weeks to go and focus on myself but ultimately it was for them… that I can get us through this bit. I needed some help to be able to do that.”
She added: “I don’t want them to ever feel like they have to prop me up.
“None of this is their fault and it’s my job to support them and make them feel safe and secure, and I just don’t think I was able to do that because of the emotional turmoil that I was in at the time.
“But I do feel like I am now. I’m not saying that I’m 100% there or getting it 100% right or that I ever will but I’m definitely in a stronger place.”
She said that when she was in the centre, the Los Angeles fires broke out, and she did not know as she had no phone or TV.
“So the outside world was to make no effect on the work that we were doing,” Allen said.
“So then when I got out and I heard about these fires I was like f****** hell that seems so intense, and then a week later I was out here.”
She also said that she has returned to social media, and has been “commissioned to do a musical” in Los Angeles.
“It will be a long process but this little stint is the beginning, but it’s been going really well,” she added.
She said she is “not a particularly spiritual person” but mediating has helped her “living in the moment rather than thinking about the past too much and worrying about the future too much”.
Allen has increasingly turned to acting, appearing on the West End stage in 2:22 A Ghost Story, as well as in Sky series Dreamland and the West End revival of Martin McDonagh’s Olivier Award-winning comedy The Pillowman.
The daughter of Welsh actor Keith Allen, she began her musical career in 1998, and has achieved three UK number one singles and two UK number one albums.
