La La Anthony and her now ex-husband Carmelo Anthony went through a very public split over the past few years. Now that the divorce is finalized, the star is opening up about what she learned through that breakup and what she wants for herself moving forward.
She told Charlamagne in a Hollywood Reporter interview, “Within me, I think that stepping away from that marriage was such an incredibly hard decision for me, but it made me realize there’s nothing I can’t do.”
We can empathize with how tough walking away from a marriage is, especially when you share a child together. La La and Carmelo have a 15-year-old son named Kiyan.
The 39-year-old Afro-Latina actress said she’s been working on her mental health and building a new life post-divorce. She also told Charlamagne how hard the decision was to leave her comfort zone from a man she had been with since she was 19 and a situation where her son had both parents.
“Staying is easier. Walking away is harder,” she said. “To step away from that and try to build my own life and still keep my sanity and keep things normal for my son, who only knew his mom and his dad together, that wasn’t the easier decision, but I had to make a decision for myself. So now it’s like, wow, if I could do that, I could do anything.”
Not every divorce ends well, and when it doesn’t it can negatively affects the kids. For La La, she’s determined to make sure that Kiyan grows up in a healthy environment. She said co-parenting with Carmelo has been going “amazing.”
“We want to be a great example to our son,” she said. “We have open conversations with him. We tell him, ‘You were made from love.’ We’re still a family, and we do things together. We go to his games together. We try to keep it as normal as possible.”
Despite the positive path forward that she’s on, the actress still has hard days because she envisioned being married forever. She said she is hoping to find love again and is taking advice from her bestie Ciara to pray for exactly what she wants, even if she admittedly has doubts.
“I do pray. I definitely pray that it will happen, but I’m also at a place where if it doesn’t, then I’m gonna still have fun. I have great friends. I have great family. I’m not lacking. I would love it. But it’s just, it’s slim pickings,” she said. “It’s hard to trust when you’ve been scarred in a sense. I’m like, ‘Damn, that really messed me up in a lot of ways,’ but I’m in therapy. I’m dealing with my own stuff, and I would love to find love and a companion to do fun stuff with and someone I can rely on.”