Miley Cyrus‘mom, Tish Cyrus, is breaking her silence on her divorce from Billy Ray Cyrus. Tish and Miley’s sister, Brandi, made an appearance on Call Her Daddy‘s latest episode, which dropped on February 7. Tish opened up about how her life changed during the COVID-19 pandemic—including how she grieved her mother’s death and went through her divorce with Billy Ray, who lived in Tennessee while she stayed in California.
“During that period, I took a really good, hard look at life, my life, and like, ‘What was I gonna do?'” she told host Alex Cooper before explaining that her relationship “had not been in a good place for a long time” and that she stayed with Billy “out of fear of being alone.”
She continued, “So being alone, and all of a sudden just having kind of the weight of the world off my shoulders, and I was able to just breathe. And smoke pot and garden, and go skinny dipping in my pool. That’s what I did during covid. It was hugely transformative.”
Tish’s mom passed away in August 2020, and she said that being alone with her grief came with challenges. “It was so crazy, my two biggest fears in life were being alone and my mom passing away. And I had one month of a complete psychological breakdown. It was the worst thing, it was not good. I just kind of pushed the mom thing under the rug, and then the divorce thing came.”
She added, “I could not eat, I could not sleep, I could not stop crying. I don’t have my mom, and then I don’t have my husband that has been my husband for 30 years. Like I’m scared.”
Tish and Billy Ray were on the brink of divorce two times—once in 2010 and another time in 2013—before they finalized their divorce in 2022. When looking back at her decision, Tish reflected that she originally wanted to wait for her youngest daughter, Noah Cyrus, to be older when she left Billy Ray. “I really didn’t want Noah to still be young,” she explained. “But looking back on it, it would have been much better for her had I left.”
Catch Tish and Brandi’s full Call Her Daddy episode below.
