Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Emily Richardson | Celebrity | January 10, 2024
Trigger warning: suicide, depression.
Today, Ashley Judd was a guest on CNN’s All There Is with Anderson Cooper. The podcast explores grief and loss. The title of the episode was, “Grief, Love, and Naomi”. Ashley lost her mom, Naomi Judd, to suicide in 2022, after a long struggle with depression. The country legend was 76.
Ashley was the one to find her mother as she was dying from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. She held Naomi as she passed. Ashley describes this experience as “traumatic”, “unexpected”, and “graphic”. But, ultimately, she’s “so glad” she was there for her mother’s final moments:
Because when when I walked in that room and I saw that she had harmed herself, the first thing out of my mouth was, “Momma, I see how much you’ve been suffering and it is OK… I am here, and it is OK to let go. It is OK to go. I am here. It is OK to let go. I love you. Go see Daddy. Go see Pappa Judd. Go be with your people.”
Damn. Ashley believes her mom “is now in the vastness of consciousness in the mind of God,” adding that it’s probably “a great place to be.” She says, “All of these mysteries, which just made her daydream, are now where her spirit resides.”
Ashley also recalls how Naomi always insisted on getting up to greet her, even on her worst days:
Invariably, she got up. No matter how sick she was. And she would light up. And she would come to the back door and open it. And she would exclaim, “There’s my darling, there’s my girl, there’s my baby!” And that’s how I see my mom.
Anderson also lost a family member to suicide. His only brother, Carter, died by jumping from the 14th-floor terrace of their mother Gloria Vanderbilt’s penthouse apartment in Manhattan. Anderson was 21.
When 56-year-old Anderson brought up his late brother on the podcast, he tried to keep himself from crying. Ashley gently said, “I’m here, Anderson,” and he continued:
One of the things I found so hard about losing my brother to suicide was, I get stuck in how his life ended, and my shock over it and the realization that I didn’t really know him, and I wonder if the manner of you mom’s death made you question how much you knew her.
Ashley thanked him for sharing, and responded:
All of our stories are sacred, and I really honor the place in you that that’s coming from, and I think we all deserve to be remembered for how we lived. How we died is simply part of a bigger story.
Anderson also opened up about losing his brother in a 2021 interview with PEOPLE. He said the loss was always a painful thought for him and his mother, right up until her death in 2019:
‘Til the day she died, we were both still stunned by what happened. There are some things that never can be answered and you have to find a way to live in that space of not knowing, or not fully understanding.
Here’s a clip of Ashley on Anderson’s podcast:
@cnn When Naomi Judd died by suicide in 2022 after a long struggle with mental illness, her daughter Ashley found her. In this deeply moving conversation, Ashley Judd talks to Anderson Cooper about the trauma she has worked hard to face, the grief she now feels, and how her mother’s spirit is still very much alive in her life. For more of “All There Is with Anderson Cooper” click on the link in our bio or follow the show wherever you get your podcasts. #cnn #andersoncooper #podcast #ashleyjudd #naomijudd #grief ♬ original sound - CNN
And here’s the link for the full episode.
