Kelsea Ballerini has made a career out of feminine relatability. Songs like “Homecoming Queen?,” “Leave Me Again” and “Mountain With a View” describe essential — and often painful — experiences of womanhood.
Even more heartachingly specific is her new song “I Sit in Parks,” which Ballerini released on Friday (Nov. 7) after announcing a new EP called Mount Pleasant.
In its lyrics, Ballerini wonders if she’s missed her chance to become a mother.
She describes sitting in a park, watching a young family having a picnic, and wondering if she made a mistake by prioritizing her country music career over fulfilling that other, more common but no less wondrous, dream.
“By now is it a lucid dream? / For chasing things a body clock doesn’t wait for?” Ballerini asks in the chorus of the song.
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Not many women will backburner parenthood specifically to pursue a career as one of country music’s A-Listers. But the question of whether to have kids now or later –biological clock be damned — is a common one.
So too is the experience of catching a glimpse of the other side: Seeing a woman out in public with her kids, or up onstage at the top of her industry, and wondering if you chose wrong.
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Ballerini got married to fellow singer Morgan Evans at a relatively young age, when she was 24.
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The couple divorced in 2022, and in subsequent interviews, she has said that they differed on their timeline for having kids. She said that Evans wanted to be a parent sooner rather than later, claiming he didn’t want to be an “old dad.”
But Ballerini wasn’t ready, and made a doctor’s appointment to talk about freezing her eggs, without telling Evans until afterward.
When she did tell him, her husband pushed back. It was one of the things that led her to rethink their marriage, she admits.
“And whether I’ll get there [to parenthood] or not, I don’t think it’s with this person if it is,” Ballerini remembers thinking. “And I think internally in hindsight, that’s where I went, like, ‘I think maybe we need to rethink this, Kels.'”
What is Kelsea Ballerini’s Relationship Status Now?
After her divorce, Ballerini and actor Chase Stokes dated for nearly three years before breaking up in September 2025.
Nearly two months later, they were reportedly spotted holding hands in two international locations — first in Scotland, then Croatia — but no official reports of a reconciliation have come out.
Kelsea Ballerini, “I Sit in Parks” Lyrics:
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 the same Saturdays…
Chorus:
Did I miss it? / By now is it a lucid dream / 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 wondered if I missed the mark
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 God damnit, 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, thinking…
Repeat Chorus
So I sit in parks, checkin’ benchmarks / Tarryn’s due in June, the album’s due in March…
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Gallery Credit: Billy Dukes
