Cyrus’ struggle to grow up

Miley Cyrus has a habit of stealing the spotlight from her own music, said Brittany Spanos in Rolling Stone. The self-described “cocktail of chaos” is better known for her tabloid headlines—twerking, stripping, drugging, divorcing Liam Hemsworth last year, flings with women—than she is for her singing. “I love show business,” says Cyrus, 28. “There was a balance of me making big media moments but sadness in the fact that I would think, ‘Did anyone even hear my song?’ My voice is where I hold most of my value, to myself and other people.” Last November, Cyrus needed emergency surgery on her inflamed vocal chords, which so alarmed her she decided to give drugs and drinking. She succeeded at kicking pot and cocaine, she says, and the South American hallucinogen ayahuasca. (“The snakes come and grab you and take you to the Mama Aya. I loved it.”) As for drinking, “During the pandemic I fell off [the wagon],” she says. “It was really a struggle, mental health and anxiety and all that.” She’s currently sober, she says. The divorce disappointed some fans, but Cyrus says she and Hemsworth weren’t compatible. “It looked like I was living some fairy tale,” she says. “It really wasn’t.”

A miracle birth

Tina Gibson was 1 year old when her future daughter’s embryo was placed in a cryogenic freezer, said Marisa Iati in The Washington Post. In October, Gibson, 29, gave birth to Molly, who became the longest-frozen embryo known to have come to birth. “She’s been the light of every day in 2020—the one thing to look forward to when everything seems to be falling apart around you,” said Tina, who lives in Knoxville, Tenn. The embryo that led to Molly was frozen in the Midwest until 2012, when it was packed in liquid nitrogen and shipped to an embryo adoption facility in Knoxville. In February, a fertility specialist thawed the embryo and transferred it to Tina’s uterus. Her husband, Ben, 36, has cystic fibrosis, which makes him infertile. Roughly 78,000 infants born in 2017, or 1.7 percent of all infants born that year, were conceived with assisted reproductive technology. Embryo adoptions—which use leftover embryos from in vitro fertilizations—account for just 5 percent of those births. Molly’s record-setting birth surpassed that of her genetic sibling, Emma, whose embryo was frozen for 24 years before Gibson gave birth to her in 2017. Tina and her husband are open with their elder daughter about how she and her sister were conceived. “She’s going to think that most kids were born from an embryo transfer,” Tina said.