The Healing Journey

January 11, 2024

“Grief hurts in a deeply particular way, and isolation makes it worse.”
— Ashley Judd

When the celebrated country music singer Naomi Judd committed suicide, her daughter Ashley said, “Trauma took up all of the space inside me.”

An actress and humanitarian, she told New York Times reporter Christina Caron that since her mother’s death in April 2022 after a struggle with mental illness, she spends a portion of her day journaling every morning and writing to her mother.

“I might tell her about my day,” Judd told the reporter. “I might tell her how much I love her and miss her. It’s a way we stay very close.”

Since what she described as “the most shattering day of my life,” she has spent time writing about grief and mental health and advocating causes for suicide prevention.

Caron wrote: “At first, Ms. Judd said, she was in shock over her mother’s death, which eventually gave way to grief. Last fall, she began having nightmares and weeping in her sleep, overcome by intrusive thoughts — flashbacks from the day of her mother’s death.”

She found her mother in the bedroom, and she died later that day. Since that time, she has found solace in spiritual writing, her friends and her stepfather.

“A lot of times, grieving people don’t know what they need,” she told the reporter. “To ask them, ‘What can I do?’ is sincere but overwhelming. It can be more helpful simply to act and schedule yourself to take out the recycling or to show up to take the dog out every day at 10 a.m.”

Last January, she had a birthday party for her mother, who would have been 77. More than 60 people showed up and celebrated her life with their personal stories of Naomi.

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