Nearly four years after filing for divorce from Billy Ray Cyrus, Tish Cyrus is opening up the internal struggles she faced during their split.
The “Sorry We’re Cyrus” host spoke candidly about the tough time in her life on the Jan. 14 episode of “The Squeeze” podcast. “Anything that’s happened I’m kind of like, ‘Well that’s life, just keep it moving,’” Tish shared. “I’d been in this relationship since I was 23 or 24 so, again, I kept it moving.”
Tish, 58, revealed that the emotional toll of her marriage ending came on the heels of another devastating loss: her mother, Loretta Jean Palmer Finley, who passed away just two years before the divorce. “Two of the most tragic things in my life that happened—I did not process or even stop to really think about,” she admitted.
During this time, Tish turned to cannabis to cope with her grief over her mother and her relationship. “I’ve been very open that I was a major weed smoker. For that, because I’ve always had a little bit of anxiety, that was almost like medicine for me,” she said. She acknowledged that she was “self-medicating in some ways” and didn’t even realize it at the time.
When Tish quit smoking cannabis in 2024, the suppressed emotions she’d been avoiding hit her all at once. “I do think it kind of numbed all that pain and then I stopped smoking and all of a sudden a week later, I’m just in full-on anxiety to the point of not functioning,” she recalled. “It was the roughest thing I’d ever gone through.”
Over a year later, Tish says she’s learning to manage her anxiety. “I’m so much better,” she emphasized. “Like, I was not functioning for that year, I was just trying to survive. Now, I’m completely on the other side of that. I’m learning to control it.”
Tish filed for divorce from Billy Ray, 64, in April 2022 after 29 years of marriage, citing “irreconcilable differences” in court documents. She had not lived with the country singer since February 2020.
Through time and therapy, she finally feels like she’s on the road to healing. “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,’” she said.
Now, Tish has found love with her new husband, Dominic Purcell, whom she married in August 2023. “It was so safe,” she shared. “There was just no drama. I think it gave me this place to stand still and, like, feel all these feelings.”
