Tish Cyrus is speaking candidly about one of the most painful periods of her life, opening up about the emotional toll of losing her mother and navigating the breakdown of her marriage to Billy Ray Cyrus in rapid succession.
In a recent appearance on The Squeeze podcast, Tish explained that the closeness of those events left her without the emotional space to properly process either of them. The weight of grief and heartbreak, she said, hit all at once.
“Two of the most probably tragic things in my life that happened, I did not, like, process or even stop to really think,” Tish told host Tay Lautner.
Her mother, Loretta “Mammie” Finley, died in 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Tish described the loss as devastating, not only for her but for the entire family. She emphasized just how central her mother had been to their daily lives.
“I was very close to my mom, and my kids were really close to my mom,” she said. She also shared that Finley lived with the family while Miley Cyrus was filming Hannah Montana. “She was just a massive part of our lives.”
The bond between grandmother and granddaughter was especially strong. Tish recalled how involved her mother was in Miley’s early career and how deeply the children adored her. “Her and Miley were very close. She’d go to the set with Miley and just my kids just worshiped her,” Tish said.
The emotional fallout from that loss bled into other areas of her life. Looking back, Tish connected her grief to the unraveling of her marriage. “When she passed, not long after that, my marriage started falling apart.”
Tish and Billy Ray Cyrus announced their divorce in 2022 after nearly three decades together. The end of the relationship marked another major upheaval, one she has previously admitted was difficult to confront. In a 2024 interview with People, she revealed how afraid she had been to leave. “I thought I was going to be alone forever,” she said at the time.
On the podcast, she offered an even more raw assessment of that chapter of her life. “Freaking rough … it was the roughest thing I’ve ever gone through,” she said, describing the emotional strain she endured.
During that period, Tish acknowledged she struggled with anxiety and turned to smoking weed as a way to cope. She did not present it as a solution but as an honest reflection of where she was mentally at the time.
What ultimately helped her begin to heal, she said, was therapy. Opening up in a structured space allowed her to confront experiences she had long avoided examining. “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 shared.
Now, by speaking openly, Tish Cyrus is offering a glimpse into a deeply personal journey marked by grief, fear, resilience, and the slow work of self-understanding.
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