The "Psychological Breakdown" That Tish Cyrus Had During Her Divorce

The “Psychological Breakdown” That Tish Cyrus Had During Her Divorce

Tish Cyrus is reminiscing on what led to her divorce from Billy Ray Cyrus in 2022 after thirty years of marriage, as well as the emotional toll her divorce and a personal tragedy imposed on her at the time.

During her 30-year marriage to ex-husband Billy Ray Cyrus, she and Billy Ray filed for divorce on different times more than a decade before their formal separation in 2022. Tish is now explaining how the early years of the COVID-19 pandemic—during which her husband moved to Tennessee and Tish was alone in their California house for two years—gave her the courage to end her marriage.

“During that period, I took a really good, hard look at life, my life, and like, ‘What was I gonna do?'” she said Alex Cooper on the Feb. 7 edition of Call Her Daddy, noting that her relationship had not been in a healthy place for a long time. I guess I stayed so long because I was afraid of being alone. “As if I had met him when I was 23, 24.”

She went on, “So being alone and suddenly having the weight of the world lifted off my shoulders allowed me to simply breathe. And smoke marijuana, garden, and go skinny bathing in my pool. That is what I did during COVID. It was quite transformational.”

Her mother passed away in August 2020, just as she was beginning to flourish on her own.

“I was alone during that time, I had to go through it alone, and I literally can’t believe I did that,” she said. “It was so crazy; my two biggest fears in life were being alone and my mother dying.” And I experienced a full psychological breakdown for one month. It was the worst; it was not good. I just sort of swept the mom issue under the rug, and then the divorce thing happened.”

She said, “I couldn’t eat, sleep, or stop weeping. I don’t have my mom, and I don’t have my spouse of 30 years. Like I’m afraid.”

But in the years following her divorce and her mother’s death, Tish has found pleasure in her relationship with Dominic Purcell. She and the Prison Break star married in a Malibu wedding in August 2023, attended by her and Billy Ray’s daughter Miley Cyrus, 30 (the previous couple also had four children: Brandi, 36, Trace, 34, Braison, 29, and Noah, 23).

Notably, Miley, was not there when her father married singer Firerose in October 2023.

However, when reflecting on her decades with Billy Ray, Tish tries not to think about what may have been if she had made other choices.

“I really didn’t want Noah to still be young,” she stated when asked whether she wished she had left her marriage sooner, “but looking back on it, it would have been much better for her if I had left.”