Ashley Judd Pens Personal Essay Recalling Final Moments With Her Mother
Ashley Judd is sharing how she felt during her final moments with her mother. She penned a personal essay that was published by The New York Times on Wednesday titled, “The Right to Keep Private Pain Private.” Opening…
Ashley Judd is sharing how she felt during her final moments with her mother.
She penned a personal essay that was published by The New York Times on Wednesday titled, “The Right to Keep Private Pain Private.”
Opening her essay, Ashley Judd reflected on the day her mother, Naomi Judd, took her own life.
“The trauma of discovering and then holding her laboring body haunts my nights,” Ashley Judd wrote.
She goes on to express her frustration with the “rampant and cruel misinformation that has spread about her death, and about our relationships with her,” saying it “stalks” her days.
According to Ashley Judd, she intends to “make the subsequent invasion of privacy — the deceased person’s privacy and the family’s privacy — a personal as well as a legal cause.”
The actress explained that family members who have lost a loved one are “revictimized” by laws that can release their private moments to the public.
“I felt cornered and powerless as law enforcement officers began questioning me while the last of my mother’s life was fading,” Ashley Judd recalled.
The essay continues, “I wanted to be comforting her, telling her how she was about to see her daddy and younger brother as she ‘went away home,’ as we say in Appalachia.”
Ashley Judd reflected on her experience with a series of interviews that “felt mandatory and imposed on me that drew me away from the precious end of my mother’s life.”
The piece criticizes law enforcement for “terrible, outdated interview procedures and methods of interacting with family members who are in shock or trauma.”