Noah Cyrus Details 'Dark' Side of Growing Up in the Spotlight: 'I Made It Out'

"A lot of my career has been the journey of finding myself again," the 25-year-old singer-songwriter tells PEOPLE while reflecting on her new album I Want My Loved Ones to Go With Me. "Now I know my sense of self, and I know what I want to write about and who I want to connect to. I'm at a place in my life where I don't think that people really know this part of who I am, because there have been so many different variations of myself 'cause I was just growing up, and I was changing. But I made it out on a really positive side of, I think, a really dark time that I was going through."

The youngest Cyrus sibling, Noah joins a long list of musically gifted family members including father Billy Ray Cyrus and sister Miley, along with sister Brandi, who is a DJ and podcaster, brother Trace who played guitar in the band Metro Station and brother Braison, who is a Nashville-based singer-songwriter.

"My dad's side of the family is very musically gifted and just love music. It's the bloodline that gave us the gift and love for music. It was the thing that brought them together -- and it's been the thing bringing us all together -- so music's been a constant through and through forever in the Cyrus family," Noah notes, telling the outlet that it was music that ultimately became her anchor when she was struggling with addiction and mental health battles.

"I was struggling with severe depression and severe anxiety, and that was really hard to juggle while touring and not taking proper care of myself or allowing myself to do the proper therapy," she reveals. "The one thing that I'm really passionate about and that I know is that I want to keep living life. I do feel like I'm in the happiest and strongest place in my life."

Looking back on her darkest moments, she says, "Whenever I look at that time in my life, I'm just really deeply saddened for myself, because only you really know what you're feeling inside, and it's a feeling that I don't wish on anyone, to not want to be alive anymore. I very much encourage people to talk about things if they're open and if they're ready to try to seek that help for themselves."

The "New Country" singer, who got sober after a Xanax addiction nearly derailed her career in 2020, credits her healing process, her music and her fiancé, Pinkus, with helping her turn her life around.

"My relationship now is a true partnership," Noah says of her fashion designer fiancé, who proposed in 2023. "It's something that I hold really close to us -- and also hold our privacy very close to us -- but in a way that I think that it also came out in songs like 'I Saw the Mountains.' I wouldn't have written that song if I wasn't so newly excited about somebody and [had] that hope of living a life together and uniting with each other."

That new perspective even ignited a major life goal for her: "I want to be a mom. This is something that I want more than any other goal in my life. I want to be alive for this; I want this to happen. And that was just something that I wasn't used to feeling, because before, I didn't really feel that connected to life."

Now, with her new album out and a tour kicking off Sept. 12, Noah is embracing her next chapter.

"This is a very strong place that I'm newly in," she says. I'm in the happiest and best, most secure spot I've been in in a very long time ... and I think that the album was a huge helping hand in getting to this place."

She also touched on the drama within in her family and shared an update on where everyone stands amid her dad Billy Ray's divorce from mom Tish Cyrus and Tish's new marriage to Dominic Purcell, who Noah was said to have dated in the past.

"I keep myself quite separated from any interest or 'drama' with the family. The one thing that’s connected us with the entire world is music, and that's what's the most important to us," Noah told PEOPLE. "Yeah, it emotionally is draining, but it doesn't hurt us or touch us. It's something that you really learn to keep separate and far away from yourself."

She continued, sharing the current status of affairs in the Cyrus family: "Everybody's great and loves each other. "I think when you grow up with that being normal -- things being public -- that it doesn't quite reach you. At the end of the day, this is a family, and that's really it: just going through normal family stuff."

I Want My Loved Ones to Go with Me is out now.

If you or someone you know needs help with mental health text "STRENGTH" to the Crisis Text Line at 741-741 to be connected to a certified crisis counselor.