How Miley Cyrus helped mom Tish during 'rough' divorce from dad Billy Ray

Miley Cyrus stepped in when her mom Tish became “nonfunctional” after her divorce from Billy Ray Cyrus.

Appearing on Tay Lautner’s The Squeeze podcast on Wednesday, January 14, Tish Cyrus-Purcell reflected on her 2022 divorce from the country star, describing it as “the roughest thing I’ve ever gone through.”

Tish and Billy’s 30-year marriage began “falling apart” not long after her beloved mother Loretta Finley’s death in 2020. Loretta was especially close with Miley, who called her “Mammie.” Tish filed for divorce in April 2022, but it was arguably the hardest thing she’d ever done.

“I was not functioning for that year — I was just trying to survive,” she admitted at one point.

“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,” she revealed, adding that she had to turn to self-medication with marijuana when her anxiety peaked.

But what really helped her process everything was therapy and a self-help book referral from her daughter, Miley. The book, called The Body Keeps the Score, 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.”