Ashley Judd has come to better “understand” her late mother’s battle with mental illness in the months following Naomi Judd’s suicide.
The double jeopardy The star said in a new podcast interview that she now knows that the decisions or behaviors the country singer engaged in were caused by the disease and not by her children, reports the New York Post.
“I look back on my childhood and realize that I grew up with a mother who had an undiagnosed and untreated mental illness,” Ashley, 54, said. Healing with David Kessler on Tuesday.
“And there are different expressions of behavior, interactions, flights of fancy, choices that he made that I understand were an expression of the disease, and I understand that and I know that he was in pain and today he can understand that he was doing the best he could, and if I could have done it any other way, I would have done it.”
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Naomi was found dead on April 30 at the age of 76 after a years-long battle with depression. The someone like you The actress and her sister, Wynonna Judd, initially announced that their mother had died of “the disease of mental illness.”
“We are devastated. We are navigating deep pain and know that as she loved her, she was loved by her audience. We are in unknown territory”, they said at the time in a joint statement.
Ashley said on Tuesday’s episode of the podcast that her “most burning wish” is for Naomi to be “able to let go of any guilt or shame she may have had for any shortcomings she may have had” as a parent “when she did the transition”.
“For certainly, on my part, all was forgiven long ago,” he said.
Wynonna, 58, and her mother, who was part of the musical duo The Judds, were scheduled to be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville the day after Naomi’s death. Instead, Wynonna and Ashley took the stage and tearfully thanked the audience for loving their mother.
“My mom loved you so much,” Ashley told the audience, “and I’m sorry I couldn’t hold on until today.
“Your love for her and your respect for her really penetrated her heart,” he continued, “and it was your affection for her that sustained her in her later years.”
This article originally appeared in the New York Post and is reproduced with permission