BREAKING NEWS: Rachel Lindsay Breaks Silence on Bryan Abasolo Divorce, Slams Claims About Career Over Family.giang

There’s a lot Rachel Lindsay wants to say following her divorce from Bryan Abasolo.

The couple, who met on The Bachelorette in 2017, finalized their divorce on Jan. 7. Three days later, Lindsay, 39, broke her silence on the year-long process on her podcast, Higher Learning.

“I’m divorced, thank you God,” she said after a pause as she admitted she was “trying to think about how to say” what she wanted to say.

“It’s a very weird feeling because from the moment he finally left the house after being here for 7 months, post-separation, I felt divorced, but for me, I’ll be honest, it’s… there’s a lot I wanna say,” Lindsay began.

The former attorney said she’s “let a lot of people do the talking without me saying anything” since Abasolo, 44, filed for divorce on Jan. 2, 2024, and as a result, “there has been a lot of stuff that is not accurate” that has circulated.

“There’s so many things that I wanna address. But this is all I’m gonna say right now. There comes a point in a divorce where you don’t just have to be the bigger person. When someone is… When someone is fighting and fighting you in this way and willing to die on every hill and not willing to compromise at all, for whatever reason they have — and I’ll talk about that later — you have to, at one point, let go, and just be the bigger person and prioritize what is most important to you,” she said. “Is it most important for it to be vengeful? Is it most important to be vindictive? Is it most important to be hateful? Is it most important to just be — to just like hang on? Or is it most important to just protect your peace of mind and let go? Which, to me, the latter is priceless.”

Lindsay said she is “trying to move on” and part of that meant she “had to make concessions that I didn’t necessarily want to do…in order to say, my peace of mind is priceless at the end of the day.”

“And I really want to start rebuilding and I want to move forward, and I’m able to do that now. And that feels really, really good, that I can start the process of, like, okay, let’s rebuild. And there’s no price on that.”

Though she continued being “careful” with what she addressed, the former reality star admitted that what “bothered” her “the most” was what her ex said about their relationship “to play into certain stereotypes that really were hurtful or bothered me… Saying things that particularly play into the stereotype of me being an angry black female.”

“There are certain things that were said to play into the stereotype of me being a career woman that were intentionally done to try to win over the media. And it was really hard to see people run with that narrative,” she said.

It “couldn’t be more false” that Lindsay “placed [her] career over a marriage” or “over wanting to have children,” she asserted.

“Those things are emphatically so not true. And to see people run with that because it’s the low-hanging fruit and it fits a certain stereotype, [was] really hurtful, and I can’t wait to fully talk about those things.”

As she looks to the future, Lindsay said she “wouldn’t get married without a prenup” again — but she’s not sure that marriage is in the cards for her at all

“It’s, like, changed my whole perspective on everything. I don’t even know if I would get married again. I can’t even fathom that,” she admitted.

The divorce itself — Lindsay was ordered to pay Abasolo $500,000, per documents obtained by PEOPLE — also “changed my timeline on things because, financially, things are so different for me now,” she said.

“It’s like, things that I wanted to do, wanna be able to do, I really can’t. And I think you know what I’m alluding to when it comes to that, so that’s also really disheartening, even though I allegedly I didn’t want those things,” she continued, potentially alluding to the narrative that she didn’t want to have kids.

Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE’s free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer​​, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.

Lindsay also said she “wasn’t gaslighting” when she talked about how long divorces can take on a previous podcast episode, as she said there was a long period of her not knowing if Abasolo was going to “accept” the terms she’d offered.

“There was an agreement in September, but obviously, it took until this point. There was still things happening,” she said. “So I am happy to drop that and move forward.”