Kelsea Ballerini Says It’s ‘Beautiful’ to Let the Highs and Lows of Life ‘Both Have Space’ (Exclusive)

Kelsea Ballerini is all about embracing the duality of life.

While chatting exclusively with PEOPLE about her partnership with Sonic for the fast food chain’s new campaign, the summer “drinks remix,” the country singer, 29, also opens up about grappling with the highs and lows she deals with every day.

“There’s such space for both to be happening at the same time,” Ballerini says of the good and bad. “I think, for a long time, I thought you can’t have wonderful big things happening while dealing with turmoil.”

Noting that she has since “learned that two things can be true at the same time,” the “Peter Pan” crooner continues, “That’s kind of just the point of life, always.”

“Just finding time for both, finding time to celebrate the wins, and finding time to grieve whatever it is that might be changing or dying out in your life — I think it’s beautiful to let both have space,” adds Ballerini.

Recently, Ballerini — who divorced fellow country singer Morgan Evans last year and has since moved on with Outer Banks star Chase Stokes — wrapped her Heartfirst tour last month.

“It was incredible,” Ballerini says of the concert event, which made various stops across the country. “Just to watch the music evolve, and the connection and the singalongs got louder and bigger throughout the last six months, it’s been really pretty crazy.”

Explaining that she is now “excited to just shift my focus into my real life and living a life to write about before I start my next project,” Ballerini admits, however, “Being still is really hard for me.”

“I always have stuff up my sleeve now,” she adds of future projects she is working on. “I’m a Virgo, I need a plan. I need a little list of things to get done. And honestly, for me, the songwriting part of it, the creative part of it, that never has ever felt like work. I don’t need time off from that ever. That’s like my favorite thing. It keeps my cup full.”

For the time being, though, Ballerini is living life and enjoying all aspects of it — including her partnership with Sonic, which she is working on with fellow artists JP Saxe, Lainey Wilson and Metro Boomin.

By sharing the artists’ favorite combos — made with all existing menu items — Sonic is reminding customers that you can always customize your drink order (like a celebrity, or not!), and Ballerini’s personal favorite is an ocean water with blue raspberry and lime.

“It’s meant for these months where the windows are down, you’re parking outside with your friends and you’re listening to music,” the star says of her creative concoction. “It’s kind of the whole experience that we wanted to capture in a cup.”

For Ballerini, her love of Sonic runs deep, given that she used to go all the time as a teenager when she was in high school.

“That was always our after-school snack,” she explains. “It was before we went to the games, all the things — it was Sonic. That was our thing to do.”

[via]