While the shocking death of her mother Naomi Judd left her emotionally scarred, Ashley was grateful she was the first person who found her body after Naomi took her own life.
- Jan 11, 2024
AceShowbiz - Ashley Judd dished on the impact of her mother's death. The 55-year-old actress became the first to discover that Naomi Judd - who was best known for appearing alongside her daughter Wynonna as part of 1980s singing duo The Judds - had taken her own life in April 2022 at the age of 76 after years of struggling with depression, and while she thinks most people are "conceptually prepared" to lose a parent, she was left "traumatised" by her own experience because it came as such a shock.
"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," she said on CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360".
"But that didn't necessarily prepare me. My mother's death was traumatic and unexpected because it was death by suicide. And I found her. And so it had this calamitous dynamic. And my grief was in lockstep with trauma because of the manner of her death and the fact that I found her. And so what I needed to do first was like vomit just I held my mother as she was dying. It was a pieta."
The "Missing" star wants others to know that it is a "graphic" story and recalled feeling the need to "process" that she was dealing with her mother's blood as she instantly recognised how much her mother had been "suffering" in that moment.
"So I but then there was there was people need to be aware that there's that that's a bit of a graphic story. And there was blood. And I just needed to, like, process the fact that I was with my mother's blood."
But Ashley was "so glad" she was the one to discover what had happened. She added, "You know, I'm so glad I was there, because even when I walked in that room and I saw that she had harmed herself, the first thing out of my mouth was, 'Mama, I see how much you've been suffering. And it is okay. It is okay to go. It's okay to go, I am here. It is okay to let go. I love you. Go see your daddy. Go see Papa Judd. Go be with your people.' "
