Naomi and Ashley Judd Broadimage/Shutterstock
It’s a new experience. Ashley JuddShe has been open about the grief she went through after the death of Naomi Judd, her mother.
“This Sunday is abruptly, shockingly, my first Mother’s Day without my mama,” the Divergent Actress, 54, wrote in a USA Today Essay written Friday, May 6. “She died just hours before her peers at the Country Music Hall of Fame could demonstrate to her how much they esteem her. She died days before my sister. [Wynonna Judd] and I could show her again how much we love and honor her.”
Ashley continued: “It wasn’t supposed to be this way. I was supposed visit her on Sunday to give her some old-fashioned candy, which is our family tradition. We were supposed to have sweet delight in each others’ easy presence. Instead, I am unmoored. But my heart does not go empty. It is filled with gratitude for everything she left behind. Her nurture and tenderness, her music and memory.”
Wynonna, 57 and Ashley, announced that their mother, who was 76, had died on April 30.
“Today we sisters experienced a tragedy. We lost our beautiful mother to the disease of mental illness,” their statement, shared via the Heat actress’ social media, read at the time. “We are shattered. We are going through profound grief. We know that she loved us as much as we loved her. We are in unknown territory.”
One day later, the Kentucky native and her eldest girl were inducted into The Country Music Hall of Fame to honor their musical legacy as The Judds.
“I didn’t prepare anything tonight because I knew mom would probably talk the most,” Wynonna said during the May 1 induction ceremony. “I’m gonna make this fast, because my heart’s broken, and I feel so blessed. It’s a very strange dynamic, to be this broken and this blessed. … Though my heart’s broken, I will continue to sing, because that’s what we do.”
Wynonna and Wynonna, a former nurse formed the mother-daughter rock band in 1983. They eventually won five Grammy Awards. After disbanding the group in 1991 amid Naomi’s battle with Hepatitis C, they performed for the first time in 30 years at the 2022 CMT Awards to sing “Love Can Build a Bridge.”
Ashley Judd is seen crying as Wynonna Judd looks on as Wynonna Judd, her sister, watches the Medallion Ceremony at Country Music Hall of Fame Nashville on May 1, 2022. Wade Payne/Invision/AP/Shutterstock
The Judd sisters, who have been grieving the loss and grief of their mother, have been vocal in their desire to honor her memory.
“Your outpouring is reaching me. Thank you for every thought, prayer, message, text, email, post, expression,” the Double Jeopardy star captioned a Monday, May 2 Instagram post. “We each are alone and we are in fellowship, broken and held, protected from nothing and sustained in everything. It’s the beginning of an old story, life and death, loss and life. Be free, my beautiful mom. Be free.”
