Jennie Garth was depressed for years before her marriage ended.

Although it was announced in March that the 90210 actress and her Twilight Saga star husband Peter Facinelli were splitting after 11 years of marriage, Jennie has admitted the relationship was in trouble for some time.

"I spent a couple of years lying in bed and being depressed. It was that 'I can't breathe' pain. Physically I didn't look my best and mentally I didn't feel my best. I was doing everything I could to be a good mom but that was all I could handle."

However, after spending several months at her Santa Ynez ranch in California following the split, Jennie - who has daughters Luca, 15, Lola, nine, and Fiona, six, with Peter - realized she had to start living her life again. "I just looked at it like there's no way I can hide out in the county and never work again, never love again and never laugh again. The past year has been a bit of a rebirth for me as a person by shedding that negative space and all the pain associated with that time," she told People.

Although she believes it was the right decision for her and Peter to break-up, Jennie does worry about how her children are handling their parents' divorce. "I end up apologizing to them a lot and I say, 'I'm sorry for the way things are, the way things have been. They're not going to be the way we thought they were going to be.' It's challenging on a lot of levels. Peter and I are certainly putting them first. We're working really hard to be the best co-parents that we can be," the 40 year-old mother said.