Ashley Judd Opens Up About ‘Abrupt and Shocking’ First Mother’s Day Without Mom Naomi Judd

Nearly one week since her mother’s passing, Naomi Judd’s daughter Ashley Judd wrote a few words for USA Today. Judd talked about this “abrupt” and “shocking” first Mother’s Day without her mom and how she and her sister, Wynonna, didn’t get the chance to “show her again how much we love and honor her.”

Ashley Judd Opens Up About ‘Abrupt and Shocking’ First Mother’s Day Without Mom Naomi Judd

Ashley went to talk about a Mother’s Day tradition they would share. “It wasn’t supposed to be this way. I was supposed to visit her on Sunday, to give her a box of old-fashioned candy, our family tradition. We were supposed to have sweet delight in each others’ easy presence.” 

Judd continued, saying, “Instead, I am unmoored. But my heart is not empty. It is replete with gratitude for what she left behind. Her nurture and tenderness, her music and memory.”

Ashley admits that while the sadness of losing her mother so abruptly has consumed her, she also admits she’s filled with “incandescent rage.” Why? “Because my mother was stolen from me by the disease of mental illness, by the wounds she carried from a lifetime of injustices that started when she was a girl.”

The actress talked about all the things her mother taught her over the years, calling era an “extraordinary parent under duress.” Naomi showed her girls the power of “having a voice and using it,” something Ashley called her “greatest lesson.”

RELATED: Sources Have Revealed Naomi Judd’s Official Cause of Death

Ashley said her mom was thrown into “motherhood without her consent.” Ashley continued saying Naomi “experienced an unintended pregnancy at age 17, and that led her down a road familiar to so many adolescent mothers, including poverty and gender-based violence.”

As Ashley continued she asked the overall question, “do we value mothers?” After talking about the uphill battle mothers are left to face after welcoming children into the world, she hoped that people would take Mother’s Day to really honor their mothers for all they do, especially “if you are lucky enough to have her.”

“My mama was a legend. She was an artist and a storyteller, but she had to fight like hell to overcome the hand she was dealt, to earn her place in history. She shouldn’t have had to fight that hard to share her gifts with the world.”

As Mamas Uncut previously reported, Judd passed away on April 30 following a longtime battle with mental illness. Sources confirmed that Naomi died by suicide just one day before she and her daughter were honored by becoming members of the Country Music Hall of Fame.