Nearly two years after her famed mother Naomi Judd died by suicide, Ashley Judd is still feeling the trauma of her death.
The country star died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound at her home in Tennessee on April 30, 2022. She was 76. Ashley, 55, was the first person to find the body.
“My mother’s death was traumatic and unexpected because it was death by suicide, and I found her,” Ashley said on the Wednesday, January 10, episode of the “All There Is With Anderson Cooper” podcast. “And, so, it had this calamitous dynamic, my grief was in lockstep with trauma.”
For many years, Naomi performed with daughter Wynonna Judd as The Judds, winning five Grammy Awards and nine Country Music Association awards. Despite being one of the most admired stars of country music,, she struggled with depression.
“This [depression] lasted forever. I didn’t get off my couch for two years,” Naomi said during a December 2017 appearance on the Today show. “I was so depressed that I couldn’t move.”
“I wouldn’t even brush my teeth. I wouldn’t get out of my pjs,” she added. “My husband and my girlfriends and [daughter] Ashley would come over and I would just go upstairs and lock the door to my bedroom. … You become immobilized.”
During her conversation with Cooper, Ashley opened up about coping with her mother’s depression.
“I think that the death of a parent is something for which we, at least conceptually, have some kind of preparation. I also knew that she was walking with mental illness and that her brain hurt and that she was suffering,” Ashley continued in her interview with Cooper.
The Ruby in Paradise actress has been healing for the past 20 months since her mom died.
She sought support in eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) therapy, which can help reduce negative emotions associated with traumatic events. However, the memory of seeing her mother dead continued to haunt her.
“I actually had a re-experience of the shock, which is the first stage of grief, a year after my mama died. You know, I would just be doing something, washing the dishes, writing on my second book, and this wave of shock would overcome me, as if I had just walked in the room again,” she said.
Ashley also has fond thoughts about her late mother as she remembered how Naomi would greet her whenever she would stop by to visit on the back porch of her mother’s Tennessee home.
“Invariably, she got up. No matter how sick she was,” Ashley recalled. “And she would light up. And she would come to the back door and open it. And she would exclaim, ‘There’s my darling, there’s my girl, there’s my baby!’ And that’s how I see my mom.”
If you or someone you know is contemplating suicide, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988.
