Ashley Judd Says She and Other Family Members Agree to Disagree About How to Grieve Naomi Judd’s Death

variety.com:

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music CriticAshley Judd has spoken up at greater length about the mental illness that led to the suicide of her mother, Naomi Judd, almost three months ago, and about the very different passages of grieving she and other family members have gone through, in an hour-long interview for the Spotify podcast “Healing With David Kessler.”Judd and Kessler agreed that it was important for those in the audience who might be struggling with grief to hear from someone who is right in the throes of it, on top of the experts who have appeared on the podcast to address it from more of a distance. “It’s scary to be vulnerable and transparent and to talk about acute grief and suffering in real time,” she said. “And I certainly know that I do so in community with lots of other people who have had very visceral recent losses, and I hope that this can be something that is useful.” Variegation in grief was a primary topic of the podcast. “One of the things that I think we have done well as a family — meaning my pop, my sister, Wynonna and me — is we have really given each other the dignity and the allowance to grieve in our individual and respective ways,” Judd told Kessler. “And yet we’ve been able to completely stick together.

So we can be at the same supper table and recognize, ‘Oh, this one’s in anger; this one’s in denial. This one’s in bargaining; this one’s in acceptance.

I’m in shock right now.’ And we don’t try to control or redirect or dictate how the other one should be feeling at any particular moment.” Ashley said Wynonna is “in a pretty different place than I am right now.