There’s no place like home. Carrie Underwood couldn’t have factored a global pandemic into her 2020 outline, but the unexpected time at home has been a blessing.
The “Before He Cheats” signer, 37, opened up about adjusting to life in quarantine during a candid conversation with Zane Lowe for Apple Music’s “At Home With” series. While Underwood originally had some big plans for the year, she’s been able to slow things down with husband of 10 years, Mike Fisher, and their sons, Isaiah, 5, and Jacob, 22 months.
“I mean, when you do look at this year, the way it started, [I said], ‘This is what I’m going to do, I’m going to make a Christmas album, I’m going to do these [things,] X, Y, and Z,’ and then everything gets changed,” the Grammy winner said. “Early on, I feel like I did a pretty good job of saying, ‘OK, how do we circumvent our situation and what we do?’ And I feel like it brought me a bigger sense of peace in knowing that I was not in control and still, like I said, just continuing to move forward.”
Though the COVID-19 crisis threw some wrenches in her goals for the year, it gave Underwood a chance to reorganize her priorities. For the first time since she was crowned the winner of season 4 of American Idol in 2005, the “Cry Pretty” songstress felt like she could catch her breath.
“I’m very lucky,” she added. “I do have two incredible boys and my husband, and we live on a farm, and I kind of got to maybe get back to some of my roots boy not being on stage for a minute. I got to be outside so much and I got to work in the garden and just be a mom and be a wife and be at home. It’s the most I’ve been still in over 15 years.”
Downtime allowed the Oklahoma native to ask herself, “OK, who am I?” and learn to appreciate the little things in her fast-paced life. Before the pandemic left the world at a standstill, Underwood was constantly searching for the right balance between family and fame.
“Getting married and starting a family, you see some women in the music industry talk about how they chose not to have a family because they were focused so much on their career. I kind of took the opposite route and I’m just like, I can have it all,” she said. “I had my son Jake, and three months [later], we had our first show on the Cry Pretty tour. I was like, ‘I can do this’ and we made it through.”
By the end of the tour, Underwood felt like there was no challenge too big after she “managed to juggle” the nonstop responsibilities of being a working mom in action.
“It was all worth it,” she added. “I also love that my kids are going to remember, hopefully, some of these times and be like, ‘Wow, my mom was [a] mom but she was also [more].’ Which is such a cool, cool thought to have.”
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