Tish Cyrus Says She ‘Was Not Functioning’ After Divorce and Mother’s Death: ‘I Was Just Trying to Survive’

Tish Cyrus is opening up about divorcing Billy Ray Cyrus shortly after the death of her beloved mom, “Mammie,” which led to “the roughest thing I’ve ever gone through.”

“Two of the most probably tragic things in my life that happened, I did not, like, process or even stop to really think,” Cyrus, 58, told Tay Lautner during a Jan. 14 appearance on The Squeeze, the podcast Tay launched with husband Taylor Lautner.

It started when Cyrus’s mother, Loretta Finley — whom daughter Miley Cyrus called “Mammie” — died at 85 in 2020. Although the family has never disclosed Mammie’s cause of death, Cyrus told Lautner that she died “during COVID.”

“I was very close to my mom, and my kids were really close to my mom,” Cyrus said, sharing that she lived with them while Miley was filming her hit Hannah Montana, which aired on Disney Channel from 2006 to 2011. “Once that was all over, we had got her a little house right beside ours. She was just a massive part of our lives.” 

She continued, sharing that “her and Miley were very close. She’d go to the set with Miley and just my kids just worshiped her … when she passed, not long after that, my marriage started falling apart.”

After 28 years of marriage, Cyrus filed for divorce from the “Achy Breaky Heart” singer in April 2022; As Cyrus told PEOPLE in 2024, she was “literally terrified” to leave the marriage, explaining, “I thought I was going to be alone forever. And that was one of the times that I had the crippling breakdown of anxiety. I joke about it and say I had a complete psychological breakdown. There were 30 days where I was not eating, sleeping, just felt like I was just coming out of my skin. And it was really scary.”

Cyrus described this period in her life to Lautner as “freaking rough … it was the roughest thing I’ve ever gone through.”

She said she was self-medicating, sharing “I’ve been very open that I was a major weed smoker …I’ve always had a little bit of anxiety. I do think at that time, that was almost like medicine for me — because I’m a huge believer in plant medicine — and I think that I probably during the time I lost my mom and my marriage fell apart, that was like self-medicating in some ways, and I didn’t even realize that I was doing it for that reason.”

“I do think it kinda numbed all that pain,” she shared, explaining that when she decided to stop smoking, “I am just in full-on anxiety to the point, [of] like, not functioning. And I did not know what was happening.”

Cyrus credits therapy with helping her overcome the mental health crisis, explaining, “When I started therapy, and I really started talking about my life and moving out here and my kids in the business and, what my life had been, they were like, ‘Wow.’ ” 

Daughter Miley referred her mom to the book, The Body Keeps the Score, which explained how, “no matter whether you’ve processed something or not, and you’re not really consciously thinking like, ‘This is what’s happening,’ your body does.”

Once she was secure in her “beautiful relationship” with husband Dominic Purcell, whom she married in 2023, Cyrus says “it was so safe … just no drama … I think it gave me this place to stand still and, like, feel all these feelings.”

But, she says, “there was no less suffering for me …. I’m sure anyone that has experienced anxiety at that level, it is horrible. Absolutely horrible, and it lasted a long time. And I just now am really learning how to deal with it, and I’m so much better. Like, I was not functioning for that year — I was just trying to survive.”

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And while she says, “I’m completely on the other side of that” at times Cyrus does struggle with bouts of anxiety: “This morning, I was really anxious — and about nothing really. But I’m learning to control it.”

Her struggle has made Cyrus want to “get involved more” in organizations that deal with “mental health issues”; As she told Lautner, “the worst part of it is you feel so alone. You feel like you’re the only person in the world dealing with it. When I would hear other people talk about it [I would] realize, like, ‘You can overcome it.’ ” 

“It really is hard to see when you’re in it. But I think just hearing other people is so — it’s probably the most helpful thing.”