Anderson Cooper has explored the process of grief for more than four years on his emotional podcast All There Is With Anderson Cooper. The nakedly emotional, thoughtful chats with everyone from Travis Barker to Sharon Stone, Charlamagne Tha God and Sara Bareilles delve into the complex web of emotions brought on by loss, and in the latest episode, country star Wynonna Judd opened up about her feelings about the death by suicide of her late mother and The Judds partner, Naomi Judd.
“She talked about it a lot,” Judd said of her mother’s frequent discussion of death before her passing on April 30, 2022. “Even to her grandson who’s a deputy, about jumping off a bridge. And she talked about it so much with me. I don’t know who else, besides [Wynonna’s sister] Ashley [Judd], but she talked about it a lot. And I think I got to the point where, ‘no, no, no, no, no, no. You’re not gonna do that. You have too much to live for.’”
Judd said she couldn’t recall the first time her mom talked about death, “because she talked about it so much.” She described Naomi, who struggled with depression and mental illness for much of her adult life, calling up and saying, “‘I don’t want to be here anymore,’” prompting Wynonna to go to her house and spend the night to keep watch over her mother.
“It was awful, it was really awful,” she said. “She was really struggling in the end.”
In announcing their mother’s death, Wynonna and sister actress Ashley Judd, were forthcoming about the cause of Naomi’s passing. “We lost our beautiful mother to the disease of mental illness. We are shattered. We are navigating profound grief and know that as we loved her, she was loved by her public. We are in unknown territory,” they said in a statement at the time.
Wynonna explores her complex feelings about Naomi on her new album, The Hard Truth, her first LP in a decade and the first since her mother’s passing just days before The Judds were inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.
“My mom’s gone and that whole thing is just — I still go through denial sometimes. I just can’t believe it happened. It’s not supposed to end this way,” Wynonna told Billboard. “I feel like I’m riding a roller coaster and I just went with it. I just couldn’t imagine my life without mom. And when she left, I was so lost and so broken. I had a hard time catching my breath. And yet I showed up the next day to the Hall of Fame and got inducted. And I thought about my mom, that’s the way she raised us. I turned my pain into purpose.”
Cooper said he understood how exhausting it can be to maintain the façade in the spotlight while struggling with mental illness and depression. “She wanted to be famous,” Wynonna said of Naomi. “Yep, she was definitely let down by the pharmaceuticals and doctors, but she got what she wanted from certain doctors. She battled pretty severely in the end and I knew it and it broke my heart over and over again. Because she just never got the help she needed.”
Wynonna agreed that having to keep up the public façade while her mother struggled was “exhausting. That’s why I did this record,” she said of her new LP, noting that grief is not “part of who I am.”
She added that, “these songs are my testimony. I’m literally standing in front of the church giving my deepest, darkest moments before God. And I’m just begging to be understood and heard, at least. Because if it wasn’t for this music I don’t know if I would have made it or not. Because my heart was so broken.”
If you or someone you know is struggling with mental health challenges, emotional distress or considering suicide, call or text 988, or chat at 988lifeline.org 24/7.
