Ty Herndon gives off an easy, breezy vibe.

The country singer mentions the pot roast in his oven, why his husband being away for a few days is the perfect time to shampoo the carpets and how seasonal allergies are hitting him hard. Even as he sneezes, everything is delivered with a smile — and his soft Southern drawl.

I wouldn’t have grasped all that he’s carried had I not just finished his new memoir, What Mattered Most, out now.

“My soul feels 20 pounds lighter,” the 63-year-old Grammy nominee tells Yahoo. “If I had known how much freedom this was going to bring me, I would have done it years ago.”

In 2014, Herndon became the first mainstream male country artist to come out as gay. He’d known since childhood, but growing up as a Christian, he’d heard a preacher at a revival call homosexuality “a sickness that corrupts the soul.” The message — that who he was was wrong — stuck. It followed him into the music industry, where handlers directed him toward fake relationships with women to make him marketable.

The cost of secrecy was steep. It was entwined with addiction — to crystal meth, porn and sex — that took him to the edge. He had suicidal thoughts and was arrested for alleged indecent exposure and drug possession in 1995. His recovery hasn’t been linear; he relapsed in 2020.

“I've done a lot of healing from shame and guilt,” Herndon says.

Unpacking his past

For years, Herndon didn’t fully understand what was driving the behaviors he couldn’t seem to outrun.

His trauma included being drugged and raped at 21 by someone connected to Star Search, the show that launched him to fame.

When doctors later diagnosed him with bipolar disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, ADHD and dyslexia, it gave him language for struggles he hadn’t been able to name.

“I had no idea my mental health was so off the charts,” he says. “I’m not proud of some of the things that happened to me, but I’m about as human as they come. I had a lot of things going on I didn’t know about. It was good to get answers.”

Writing the memoir meant revisiting what he had repressed. He admits it took him time to open up to his coauthor, David Ritz.

“At first, I was a big old bottle of superglue,” he says. “It’s crazy what gets shut down when you just press it down.”

Through therapy, including EMDR, and meditation, he began confronting the memories.

“My soul feels 20 pounds lighter.”

“I didn’t realize how much I had buried,” he says. “I was able to go back, find those rooms, open the doors and walk on in — as painful as it may be — and just start spring-cleaning.”

The hardest part to write? About the homophobic preacher. “The next thing would have been just finally getting to tell the truth about the arrest,” he says.

The process wasn’t easy.

“Did I have days that I failed miserably? Yes,” he says. “I had days where I was sitting in the corner crying. ... I was grieving a lot of loss. [There was also] a lot of celebration. As much heartbreak that I had to walk through, it brought me a tremendous amount of joy.”

He hopes sharing his story can help others navigate their own struggles.

“I hope it’s a book that people will go back to,” he says. “OK, I’m going through a tough time — open to Chapter 14.”

His highs and lows

Examining his past has changed how Herndon sees even his darkest moments, including the mug shot he chose to include from one of the lowest points in his life.

“I love him so much,” Herndon says of his younger self. “He was still me. He was still a beautiful soul, but he was a mess. And he’s not anymore.”

He looks at other parts of his past with a similar perspective. His marriages to two women — KaSondra Hays and Renee Posey — before coming out were “a survival piece of the puzzle,” he says, adding that those relationships involved “two amazing souls that were there and did that for me.”

Looking back, coming out in 2014 became unavoidable. He recalled fellow country singer Chely Wright, who came out in 2010, telling him he’d “‘get to that place where you just don’t feel like your bones belong to you.’”

And he did, he says. “It was like my skin was crawling.”

Coming out didn’t change who he was. It allowed him to live as himself.

“It’s still me,” he says. “I’m just a cowboy from Alabama who sings country music.”

What matters most now

These days, there’s a sense of stability that Herndon says he fought hard to find. Not just in his sobriety, but in his relationships.

He speaks lovingly about his husband, Alex Schwartz, who he married in August 2023, describing a kind of partnership that once felt out of reach.

“When I lay my head down at night, I can’t imagine life without him,” he says. “I breathe better with him.”

Any insecurities about their age gap — Schwartz is reportedly three decades younger than Herndon — quickly faded.

“I’m like, ‘It’s Saturday night. Let’s go out,’” Herndon says. “He’s like, ‘We’re gonna watch The Golden Girls and stay at home.’”

He says Schwartz brings a steadiness to his life that he needed.

“Because of everything I’ve been through, Alex just is, like, ‘You know, I’m not going anywhere,’” he says. “I never thought any of this would be possible … that I’d be married to this amazing person who loves me with all his heart. I love him to death.”

Despite the religious trauma he endured, Herndon’s faith remains.

“If it weren’t for my spirituality … I wouldn’t be here today,” he says. “You know how you pick up a puppy by the skin on the back of its neck? God carried me like that… Tyrone Herndon is still a believer.”

Now that things have aligned in all facets of his life — he signed a three-album deal last year — he’s less focused on getting everything right and more focused on continuing to grow.

“I’m not going to do this perfectly,” he says. “But every day I wake up and know that I’m doing it better.”