Maren Morris Reveals She Once Had a Panic Attack Before Opening for The Chicks amid Her Divorce

• Maren Morris got candid about her mental health struggles during an appearance on SiriusXM this month
• The singer opened up about a panic attack she had on tour last year amid her divorce from ex-husband Ryan Hurd
• The Grammy winner also recently told PEOPLE how she didn't want to cancel songwriting sessions during the week she filed for divorce
  

Maren Morris is looking back on a challenging year.

During an August appearance on SiriusXM’s Fierce: Women in Music show, the singer-songwriter, 34, opened up about the mental health struggles she endured amid her divorce from her ex-husband, country musician Ryan Hurd, whom she split from last year after five years of marriage.

According to Morris, the pressures of her personal life boiled over while she was opening up for The Chicks' 2023 world tour last fall.

"It was in Toronto last year, we were opening for The Chicks, and a lot of things at home weren't feeling great and I definitely, during soundcheck, had a bit of a mental ... well, it's just a panic attack," the musician admitted. "I was able to do the show, but it was a lot of factors."

"Sometimes life's not waiting for you to conveniently break down when you're at home in the comfort of your own bedroom," she added. "Sometimes you have to put your big girl pants on and go do the show still."

Morris also shared how difficult it was to put on a brave face while juggling her career and parenting her son, Hayes Andrew, whom she shares with Hurd. "You still have to be a mother, even though maybe everything in your life that day has imploded or that year. It's like, you're shielding the explosion from a 4-year-old," the performer continued.

Morris noted that once she felt "safe" to finally let her emotions flow, she "kind of allowed myself to fall apart." "Like once everything had ended and like everything was finalized. That's when I was like, 'OK, now I can cry,'" she said. "Because I feel like we have to be pretty steady through the process."

Later in the interview, the "Push Me Over" singer revealed that she continued to work on music during her divorce from Hurd, 37, even continuing songwriting sessions the same week she filed in October 2023.

"The week that I filed for divorce, I had writes all week, and there were people coming in from [Los Angeles] to Nashville. So I didn't wanna cancel because they'd flown in to write with me," she explained. "I felt like I had a responsibility even through that darkness."

Remembering the course of events that week, Morris recalls how her friends from L.A. were like, "'Oh my God.' Because, you know, they didn't know I had planned to do that that Monday." "They were like, 'Are you sure you wanna be here? Like, we can totally cancel,'" she recalled. "And I'm like, 'No, I really need to be here. I can't go home.'"

Morris echoed similar sentiments about working through her divorce during a recent interview with PEOPLE while discussing her latest EP, Intermission, which dropped on Aug. 2.

"I was writing through a lot of really tough weeks where I probably could have just canceled my sessions," she shared, "but I'm glad that I didn't because I wanted to be able to freshly... Even in the most heartbreaking, depressed stage, be able to document my experience that day and then find my way back to the surface through each song."

The Grammy winner also opened up about still singing songs inspired by/worked on by her singer-songwriter ex-husband with no regrets, despite the sting. "There's obviously a space to exist for songs that you wrote about a love of your life," Morris added. "In some ways, I don't want to say I go into autopilot for songs like that to not feel the pain, but it is what it is."

"Those are songs that are meaningful to people, so that's such a gift," she concluded. "I don't really look back on them with shame or regret. It's like, 'That was a really beautiful time,' and I truly felt that way when I wrote it; it didn't work out in the long run, but the song still matters."