Ashley Judd Reveals What She Said in Her Final Conversation with Mom Naomi as She Lay Dying
Credit : Beth Gwinn/Getty
Naomi Judd died by suicide in April 2022
Ashley Judd is opening up about the final moments of her mom Naomi Judd’s life.
In The Judd Family: Truth Be Told (airing Saturday, May 10 and Sunday, May 11), the actress revealed what she said in her final conversation with Naomi, who died by suicide at the age of 76 in April 2022.
According to Ashley, now 57, the morning of Naomi’s death she had a text from her that read “pls help.”
When she arrived at her mother’s home, Ashley recalled her mom being “uncomfortable in her body,” pacing around the kitchen and expressing that she “didn’t want to be here anymore.”
The Someone Like You star said that Naomi eventually calmed down and spoke to her about why she “continued to live” in spite of her mental health struggles.
“One of the things she said was me, and I said, ‘You don’t have to worry about me, Mom. I’m okay. I’m okay.’ And she really clocked that in a really deep way,” Ashley said in the docuseries.
According to the Where the Heart Is star, Naomi then headed upstairs. Later, Ashley headed upstairs, calling out for her mom.
When she wasn’t responding, she headed to Naomi’s bedroom.
“I saw that she had harmed herself,” said Ashley.
She ended up spending the next half-hour holding her mother and talking to her.
“The first thing I said to her was, ‘It’s okay, it’s okay. I’ve seen how much you’ve been suffering.’ And we just breathed together, and I talked to her and told her how much I loved her, and it’s okay to go,” Ashley recalled.
“When she died, my most earnest wish was to make sure that she was relieved and absolved of her guilt and her shame. I was holding her hand. I was kissing her. She was so soft. She smelled so pretty,” she said.
In August 2022, an autopsy report obtained by the Associated Press, and completed after Naomi’s death, confirmed that she died by suicide.
The report indicated that Naomi died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in her Tennessee home on April 30, 2022.
“We have always shared openly both the joys of being family as well as its sorrows, too. One part of our story is that our matriarch was dogged by an unfair foe,” the family told the AP in a statement. “She was treated for PTSD and bipolar disorder, to which millions of Americans can relate.”
The Judd Family: Truth Be Told, directed by Alexandra Dean, airs on Lifetime May 10 and 11 at 8 p.m. ET/PT.
