Naomi Judd’s Final Gift: The Country Music Superstar Inspires a National Conversation about Mental Health

Watch Ashley’s Moving Tribute and Wynonna Perform a Special Song Written by Her Mother

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May is Mental Health Month, and last night the topic was center stage at a solemn, heartfelt televised service that no one ever dreamed of.

At the mother church of country music, the Ryman Auditorium in downtown Nashville, Ashley Judd opened a memorial service in honor of her mother, Naomi, who died by suicide just two weeks earlier. "Thank you for being in community and fellowship,” Ashley said. “We can pretend to care, but we can’t pretend to show up.”

Four days earlier, on Thursday, May 12th, Ashley went on GMA and did something unimaginable in the annals of one of the country’s oldest and most tradition-bound art forms: She spoke honestly and forthrightly about the cause of Naomi’s death.

“She used a weapon,” Ashley said. “A firearm. So that’s the piece of information we are very uncomfortable sharing.” Ashley said the family had decided to reveal these details out of fear that the news would otherwise become public, which in the tight-knit community of Nashville is a safe bet. Naomi, along with Ashley’s older sister, Wynonna, were scheduled to be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame the following night.

“That is the level of catastrophe of what was going on inside of her,” Ashley said. “Because the barrier between the regard in which they held her couldn’t penetrate into her heart and the lie the disease told her was so convincing.”

In the mid-1990s, I was given exclusive access to the Judd family for a period of two years as part of a book I was writing, Dreaming Out Loud: Garth Brooks, Wynonna Judd, Wade Hayes, and the Changing Face of Nashville. You can read exclusive details of Naomi’s early life, including previously unknown details of Wynonna’s real father, in a post I made last week following the announcement of her death.

What strikes me now, two weeks later, is how extraordinary and, I believe, unprecedented, is the reaction of the Judd family. The remarkable candor is almost unheard of in Nashville history and calls to mind other milestone health revelations, from Betty Ford with alcoholism to Rock Hudson with AIDS. More recently, other families of celebrities have been open that their loved ones died by suicide, including Robin Williams, Anthony Bourdain, and Kate Spade.

Naomi Judd and Wynonna Judd perform "Mama, He's Crazy" (Photo by Lester Cohen/WireImage)

But Nashville is different and brings the story of mental illness before a new audience.

To her credit, Naomi was open for a long time about her struggles with mental illness. In her memoir, Love Can Build a Bridge, Naomi describes how when she was still known as Diana she became pregnant unexpectedly at age 17. At the time, her brother was drying of Hodgkin lymphoma, and Diana twice tried to take her own life—first with a knife in the bathroom, then by throwing herself off the water tower. When she lost her nerve on both occasions, Diana finally resolved to tell her parents. "Do you love him?" her father asked. "No," she said. Her parents insisted she marry anyway. She did, to a different man, who five years later became Ashley’s father.

Naomi was not the only one in the family to try to end her life. In the on-the-record interviews I did with Wynonna for my book, she revealed for the first time that in the tumultuous early days of the Judds career, when Naomi and Wynonna would often have tense showdowns, Wynonna tried to take her life by driving her father’s car into a tree.

“I attempted suicide by deliberately going out and drinking and driving,” Wynonna told me. “I was coming home on a long, deserted stretch of highway in Ocala. I was so wasted I don't even remember what happened, but I do remember attempting to run off the road. The car spun around 360 degrees, at least twice, and I ended up in the middle of the road facing the other way.”

Ashley Judd, Naomi Judd and Wynonna Judd during APLA 6th Commitment to Life Concert Benefit at Universal Amphitheater in Universal City, California, United States. (Photo by Ke.Mazur/WireImage)

As the two often did, Wynonna and her mother patched up their relationship.

In 2016, after the Judds' retirement, Naomi released a memoir that has taken on new meaning in recent days. It was called River of Time: My Descent into Depression and How I Emerged with Hope. As she told GMA at the time, her mental health problem would get so bad she would “not leave the house for three weeks, and not get out of my pajamas, and not practice normal hygiene.”

By all accounts, Naomi was in a similar dark state in the days leading up to her death.

In her opening remarks at Sunday night’s memorial, Ashley described her mother as “yearning and restless” as well as “complex and dynamic.”

“She was every woman," Ashley said. "Perhaps that’s why everyone felt they knew her.”

All of those statements are true. In her performing life with Wynonna, Naomi earned 12 #1 records, sold 20 million albums, and won five Grammys. But as we’ve learned in recent days, one of her greatest legacies will be her willingness to be open in discussing one of the most wrenching and lingering taboos in American life, the struggle against mental health. Wynonna vowed last night to keep that conversation alive this fall as she performs by herself on the final tour she was supposed to take with her mother.

One moment in particular from Sunday night's service stays with me. As you can see in the clip abpve, Wynonna sang Naom's anthem, “River of Time." The words capture the poignant, bittersweet feelings that we all experience in a life that bends in ways we don't expect and takes nonlinear twists we will never overcome.

We’re all driven by the winds of change

Seems like nothing ever stays the same

It's fate that guides me around the bend

Life's forever beginning, beginning again.

If you need help with mental illness in the United States, please the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 (TALK). Internationally, please visit The International Association for Suicide Prevention and Befrienders Worldwide.

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cover image ©Stephen Cohen/Getty Images