It’s been a year since Naomi Judd unexpectedly passed away on April 30, 2022, after losing her battle to mental illness. She was 76.
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On the anniversary of her death, daughter Ashley Judd paid respect to her late mother and one-half of the Grammy-winning duo The Judds with an essay published in TIME. Prior to Judd’s death, the vocalist had opened up about her struggles with depression and bipolar disorder.
Within the lengthy reflection, Ashley recalls her first birthday without her mother and how she picked a card she believes her mother would have selected for her.
“Earlier this month, I walked through my first birthday without her, a rite of passage everyone experiences with the death of their parents,” wrote Ashley. “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.’’
Ashley said that she felt her mother’s spirit that day. She explained that the Country Music Hall of Famer would recount her birth story every year. Following her 55th birthday, Ashley revealed she mustered up the courage to go through her mother’s possessions.
“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,” shared Judd. “These intimate exchanges with the private fortify me. They remind me of the interior landscape of my mother’s soul, the innocent God-scape that somehow remained untouched by the mental illness that marred her life.”
To continue her legacy, Ashley pledges to use her platform to advocate for victims of human trafficking and sexual exploitation – a cause that her mother felt passionate about.
“On her behalf, I will continue to be ‘audacious,’ as she called me, in my full-hearted, full-throated fight for freedom from the male entitlement to female bodies,” declared the thespian. “With April being not only the anniversary of her passing but also Sexual Assault Awareness Month, I will therefore accept in her honor the Lifetime Igniting Impact Award from the World Without Exploitation, which works to create a world where no one is bought, sold, or exploited.”
Ashley and sister Wynonna Judd will also accept the Lifesaver Award from the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. She also declared that Mercy Community Healthcare in Franklin, Tennessee, will be naming their mental health facility after their mother.
“During this past year I have learned how I can make the irreplaceable loss of my mom serve her legacy,” said Ashley. “There is lament, and there is also meaning. Everything is put to use in God’s economy as the painful past can be transmuted into service for others.”
(Photo by Katie Kauss/Getty Images for CMT)
