Heartbreaking details. Less than a month after Naomi Judd was found dead at the age of 76, her daughter Ashley Judd is talking about her mother’s suicide.
“She used a weapon… My mother used a firearm,” Ashley, 54, said on “Good Morning America” on Thursday, May 12. the position is that if we don’t say it, someone else will.”
Opening Diane Sawyer, the “Double Jeopardy” actress spoke about her mom’s battle with mental health.
“My mother knew that she was seen and heard in her agony. They took her home,” Ashley said through tears. “When we talk about mental illness, it is very important to be clear and distinguish between a loved one and an illness. It’s very real. It’s a lie, it’s wild. My mother, our mother, couldn’t hold out until her peers inducted her into the country’s Hall of Fame. I mean, that’s the level of catastrophe of what was going on inside her. …The lies that the illness told her were so convincing. … [Lies] that you are not enough, lies that you are not loved, that you are unworthy. Her brain was hurting. It’s physically painful.”
Ashley and Winona Judd, who sang with her mother as part of the award-winning country duo The Judds, announced Naomi’s passing via Twitter on April 30.
“Today we, sisters, have experienced a tragedy. We lost our beautiful mother due to mental illness,” they wrote in a joint statement. “We are defeated. We are going through deep grief and we know that just as we loved her, so the public loved her. We are in unknown territory.”
A day later, The Judds were inducted into the country’s Hall of Fame.
“I didn’t cook anything today because I knew that Mom would talk the most,” Winona said on stage with her sister. “I’m going to do it quickly because my heart is broken and I feel so blessed. It’s a very strange dynamic to be so broken and so blessed. …Although my heart is broken, I will continue to sing because that’s what we do.”
