Khloé Kardashian Reveals the Painful Moment Lamar Odom Burned Her Most Personal Journals — And Why She Says She Was Left “On My Knees Screaming”
Khloé Kardashian has lived much of her life in the public eye, but even in a world built around cameras, confessionals and open-book transparency, there are still parts of her story that she has kept close to her heart. Private corners of her life that never made it onto television, never appeared in a headline, and never reached the millions of people who follow her every move. Most of those memories lived inside the stacks of handwritten journals she had filled over the years — raw, personal accounts of love, heartbreak, childhood reflections, and pieces of herself she never intended anyone else to see.
That secrecy was shattered in a single night.
On a recent episode of her podcast Khloé in Wonder Land, released on Nov. 19, the reality star opened up about something she had never fully revealed before: her ex-husband, Lamar Odom, had burned dozens of her personal journals right in front of her. It is a story she shared with calmness, yet the tremors of the past were unmistakable in her voice. This was not simply an argument or a painful disagreement. This was, as Khloé described it, a moment that broke something inside her — a moment that left her physically on her knees, screaming as the journals she had spent years filling were reduced to ash.
Khloé has always spoken candidly about the tumultuous final years of her marriage to Lamar. His struggles with addiction, infidelity and public unraveling have been documented through interviews, episodes of Keeping Up with the Kardashians, and Lamar’s own memoir. But the destruction of her journals felt like one of the most intimate and violent breaches of her emotional world — a breach she kept quiet until now.
She recalled the beginning of the journal habit: she started writing as a teenager, often using it as a way to process emotions she didn’t yet know how to articulate out loud. Through her twenties and into her marriage, the habit stayed with her. When she felt overwhelmed, she wrote. When she needed clarity, she wrote. And when her life felt like it was spinning, she wrote even more. The journals became almost an extension of herself, a safe place she could retreat to during times of pressure or chaos.
Which is why the night Lamar burned them has stayed with her all these years.
According to Khloé, the incident happened during a period when both the emotional and psychological strain within the marriage had reached boiling points. She didn’t describe the full details of the argument that led up to the moment — instead, she focused on what it felt like watching those journals burn. She described looking at Lamar as he set them alight one by one, the pages she had once filled by hand curling into flames. She said she remembered the sound of her own voice, the panic, the disbelief, the heartbreak. When the fire reached the last journal, she said she felt something collapse inside her.
“I was on my knees screaming,” she said, her voice steady but weighted. “It was like someone was burning pieces of me.”
What struck listeners was not just the story itself, but the quiet strength with which Khloé recounted it. She didn’t offer bitterness toward Lamar, nor did she try to villainize him. Instead, she presented the memory as a reflection of the deeply complicated, deeply wounded space both of them occupied at that time. She noted that addiction warps reality, destroys boundaries, and pushes relationships into territory neither person recognizes. She acknowledged that Lamar was not himself during many of those years — and that she was trying desperately to stay afloat.
But even with that perspective, the pain of losing those journals has never faded. They were, in many ways, the one part of her life that was never meant to be touched by anyone else. They held the pieces she didn’t have the courage to say out loud, the hopes she had never shared, and the fears she didn’t want anyone — including Lamar — to know.
After the incident, Khloé said she made a decision: she would never keep a journal again.
It wasn’t that she didn’t want to write — it was that the vulnerability was too raw. The idea that someone she loved could destroy something so personal created a kind of emotional scar tissue that writing never fully recovered from. Even now, years after the marriage ended and after Lamar publicly worked to rebuild his life, Khloé feels a sting when she tries to pick up a pen. The muscle memory is there, but the trust is gone.
Still, the story doesn’t end in resentment.
Khloé has consistently said that she wishes Lamar well, and she has acknowledged the strides he has made in his recovery. She has been publicly supportive of his efforts to regain control of his life, heal from trauma, and rebuild relationships. The compassion she extends toward him, despite everything they went through, speaks to a part of Khloé that fans have long admired — her ability to hold onto empathy even when she’s been deeply hurt.
But sharing this story on her podcast felt like a turning point, not a reopening of wounds. It was her way of explaining something she had never clarified before — why she, a woman who has shared so many parts of her inner life, no longer writes her thoughts down. And in doing so, she opened the door to a broader conversation about emotional violation, boundaries, and what it means to lose something that held irreplaceable pieces of yourself.
Listeners responded with an outpouring of sympathy, not only for the destruction of the journals but for the younger Khloé who endured that moment. Many were struck by the image of her on her knees, screaming — not because it was dramatic, but because it captured a kind of primal grief. The grief of watching your own words be erased. The grief of realizing a relationship has entered a point of no return. The grief of losing something you can never recreate.
Khloé’s revelation also adds another layer to her long journey of healing. Over the past decade, she has faced public betrayals, heartbreaks, co-parenting challenges, health struggles, and intense media scrutiny. And yet, she has also evolved into a woman known for resilience, humor, and a capacity for reinvention that feels almost boundless. She has turned pain into strength, heartbreak into growth, and chaos into purpose.
Still, the burning of her journals remains one of the most haunting chapters of her story — not because of the act itself, but because of what those journals represented. They were the only place she allowed herself to be fully unfiltered. They were the younger, softer, unguarded version of Khloé — the one who believed writing could save her from the storms that were starting to form around her.
When asked whether she would ever consider journaling again, Khloé said she would like to — someday. She said she hopes she can find her way back to the version of herself who wrote with freedom instead of fear. But for now, she honors that part of her in other ways: through her podcast, through conversations with loved ones, through the emotional honesty she offers her audience.
What Khloé shared wasn’t just a story about Lamar or their marriage — it was a story about the fragility of trust and the long path toward reclaiming one’s inner voice. It was about surviving emotional destruction and learning to rebuild from pieces no one else can see.
And in sharing it, she turned one of her most private heartbreaks into something universally human: the experience of losing something deeply personal, and the courage required to move forward anyway.
