Lauren Alaina has released her new single, “Road Less Traveled,” which has such an encouraging message for all people to basically just be who they are and love who they are, despite what others may think.

“It’s a song to encourage people to just be who they are and don’t apologize for it, and I think that’s a hard thing to do because it feels like there’s so much pressure to fit this mold that everyone has like made for us which is ridiculous, because last time I checked if we were all the exact same, it would be pretty boring,” says Lauren. “I’m glad that it gets to be a single, because it’s one of my favorites. It’s one that really meant a lot to me to write.”

The uplifting tune, which she co-wrote with Jesse Frasure and Meghan Trainor, was crafted during the time she was battling an eating disorder, and it was a message she has really taken to heart. [Recently, Lauren publicly revealed she struggled from bulimia for four years following American Idol.] While she’s very close friends with her co-writers, the trio didn’t really talk about what she was going through at the time.

“I don’t even know really if they knew when we wrote this song that it was kind of about [my eating disorder]. I mean, I think, sure, during the day, I was talking about how much pressure it was for me and how I feel like this needs to be a certain way and look a certain way,” says Lauren. “But I don’t know that I went into detail about, because I was really struggling with an eating disorder at the time, so I was really at the time kind of like me knowing that I needed to believe what I was writing, but it took me a while to really get there. I had to listen to this song. I had to write a million songs with this theme to kind of grow in that. So, I think maybe Meghan kind of knew, because she’s a really good friend of mine, but I don’t think we talked about it in the write. I just think we all felt this feeling to write this theme, and now I get to share it.”

“Road Less Traveled” is featured on her 2015 self-titled EP.