When Naomi Judd, a Grammy-winning country music singer, died last month, her daughter Ashley Judd said she had lost her mother to a “mental illness.” Ms. Judd was more outspoken on Thursday, saying in a television interview that her mother died of a gunshot wound to her home in Tennessee, and encouraged people in need to seek help.
Mrs. Judd, an actress, told Diane Sawyer in Good Morning America that she was talking about her mother’s death because her family wanted to share the information before it became “public without our control.”
“We are aware that although we are grieving the loss of our husband and mother, we are in an incredible way a public family,” said Ms. Judd. “So that’s really the impetus for this moment. Otherwise, it is clearly too early. So it’s important for us to say that in advance. “
Naomi Judd and her other daughter, Winona Judd, dominated the country music charts in the 1980s as a mother-daughter duo, Judd. Naomi Judd, 76, died on April 30, the day before the duo was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.
In an interview Thursday, Ashley Judd said she was visiting her mother at her home outside Nashville when she died. Ms. Judd said she went out to greet her mother’s friend who had stopped by, and when she went upstairs to tell her mother that her friend had arrived, she found her mother dead.
“My mother used a firearm,” Ms. Judd said. “This is part of the information that we are very embarrassed to share, but understand that we are in a position that if we do not say it, someone else will.”
“Mom was a brilliant interlocutor, she was a star, she was an underrated songwriter,” said Ms. Judd. “And she was a person with a mental illness, you know, and she had a lot of trouble getting off the couch, except that she went to town every day to the cheesecake factory, where all the staff knew and loved her.”
Naomi Judd was born in Ashland, a coal-mining town in northeastern Kentucky, and lived in California before moving to Nashville in 1979 as a single mother with two daughters.
Ms. Judd supports her family by working as a nurse while pursuing a music career with Wynonna. Their breakup came in 1983, when Ms. Judd was caring for a patient who turned out to be the daughter of an RCA Records director. This was followed by a recording deal, nine country music association awards, five Grammys and 14 №1 hits.
Ashley Judd said in an interview that her mother was most alive when she participated.
“She was very isolated in many ways because of the disease,” Ms. Judd said. “And yet there have been many people who have appeared for her over the years, not just me.”
Ms. Judd encouraged people in need to seek help and cited resources, including the National Suicide Hotline and the National Alliance on Mental Illness, a mental health organization that also has a hotline.
“So I want to be very careful when we talk about this today,” Ms. Judd said, “that anyone who has these ideas or these impulses, you know, to talk to someone, to share, to be open,” to be vulnerable. “
If you have suicidal thoughts, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255 (TALK) in the United States or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of additional resources. Go here for resources outside the United States.
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