Actress Ashley Judd opened up about her grief on the one-year anniversary of her mother, Naomi Judd’s, suicide.
On April 30, Ashley Judd, 55, wrote an essay for Time about the painful reality of grief.
“‘Jesus wept’ – the shortest statement in the Bible. Lamentations – the only emotion for which a book in the Bible is named. What is being said here?” she wrote.
She added, “Perhaps that we are destined to grieve. And grieve, I have.”
Ashley Judd spoke about celebrating her first birthday without her mother on April 19 and reminisced on the ways she used to make it special.
“At the shop where Mom and I always selected our cards, I read the ‘To Daughter’ birthday cards and imagined which one Mom would have given me: she always chose the gooiest and most expressive, underlined the parts she thought most meaningful, and of course, wrote by hand her own message addressed to ‘Sweetpea.’ I felt her love as I read the card I imagined she would have picked,” she said.
Ashley Judd mentioned how “mama” would tell stories about when she was a baby “with the sweetest smile.”
“A Beautiful Ouch.” Thank you @TIME for publishing https://t.co/xtVPRpw7OE sitting in sacred presence with her precious things & being audacious with my voice on her behalf: accepting @afsp Life Saver Honor & World Without Exploitation’ s Lifetime Impact honor w/ Mom cheering.
— ashley judd (@AshleyJudd) May 1, 2023
She also revealed how she chose to deal with her grief privately during this difficult time.
“I have this week started to sit in sacred presence with her precious things, to look at her strands of red hair in her brush, to hold a pretty dress she left half-zipped, to chuckle at the folded tissues she kept in every single pocket. I am studying the careful, lovely handwriting in which she recorded both the important and the trivial events of her life on Day-Timer calendars that date back to the early 1990s – when she was cured of hepatitis C, her first meeting with a new boyfriend of mine, her many hair appointments and interviews,” she wrote.
She expressed her gratitude for those who have come alongside her as she continues to grieve.
“The Bible also says, ‘Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.’ And indeed I have been comforted, by the work I’ve done to commemorate my mother, and by the many who also walk in and with grief and have shared theirs with me. Though no one can do our grief for us, it is also true that none of us need (sic) do it alone,” she noted.
On April 30, 2022, Naomi Judd died by suicide. She was 76 years old.
In an interview with “Good Morning America” in May 2022, Ashley Judd spoke openly about her mother’s mental health battle.
“That is the level of catastrophe of what was going on inside of her, because the barrier between the regard in which they held her couldn’t penetrate into her heart, and the lie that the disease told her was so convincing,” she said.