Like so many others, I was deeply disheartened to hear the news that Naomi Judd, the famous country music singer and other half of The Judds, had taken her own life over the weekend. Naomi took her own life days before The Judds were inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. Naomi Judd suffered crippling depression and she brought a lot of attention to mental issues and depression and anxiety, by using her fame as a voice to these issues, in the way of writing books and doing interviews on the subject for many years.
Naomi Judd was the mother of Wynonna Judd, her partner in The Judds singing duo, and of Ashley Judd, a movie star, activist (one of the forerunners to bringing Harvey Weinstein to justice), and a person devoted to humanitarian work. Ashley Judd also has a degree from Harvard University.
All three Judd women suffered awful abuse from their childhoods on, but I remember being really interested about the Judds and their lives, when Ashley Judd wrote her memoir All That Is Bitter and Sweet, about a decade ago. With this book, she brought a rarely heard voice of empathy, of kindness, of being understood, of validation, to “strong women”, those women who are “too good”, “too smart”, “too together” to show their pain, their weaknesses, their flaws, or their needs to the world. See this excerpt:
“I needed help,” the 38-year-old actress tells the magazine in its August issue. “I was in so much pain.”
Judd, the daughter of country music star Naomi Judd, says she entered the Shades of Hope Treatment Center in Buffalo Gap in February for “codependence in my relationships; depression, blaming, raging, numbing, denying and minimizing my feelings.”
“But because my addictions were behavioral, not chemical, I wouldn’t have known to seek treatment. At Shades of Hope, my behaviors were treated like addictions. And those behaviors were killing me spiritually, the same as someone who is sitting on a corner with a bottle in a brown paper bag.”
Judd says she was visiting her sister, singer Wynonna Judd, who was being treated for food addictions.
“When (the counselors) approached me about treatment, they said, `No one ever does an intervention on people like you. You look too good; you’re too smart and together. But you (and Wynonna) come from the same family – so you come from the same wound.‘ No one had ever validated my pain before. It was so profound,” she says.
(from an interview Ashley Judd gave to Glamour magazine in 2011)
I don’t mean to alienate my male readers. I see you, too. I see the “good guys” out there who take it all on the chin and keep on going like Energizer bunnies. To all of my strong, good, smart, “have it all together” female and male readers out there, I see you. I understand you. I empathize with you. It’s admirable how you handle your pain, your life, and your hurts. It’s not easy. You may not emote about them, nor act out on them, as much as some others do. But you have them. Your human, living a human life, in vivid, erratic times. Your hurts, your pains, your needs, are every bit as valid and important, as anyone else’s in this world. You don’t have to be steel all of the time. You can cry. You can let it all out. You can let others know that you need to be held, and to be carried sometimes, too. You are lovable as the whole package of you. You aren’t loved just because you are fierce, and capable, and reliable and giving. You may be admired for those traits, but you are wholly loved for all of you – the whole package. Let yourself be vulnerable. Let yourself be authentic. When you do this, you won’t fall apart. In fact, you will never feel stronger in your life, than when you allow yourself to welcome, and to get to know the whole of you (even the parts that you deem to be “negative” or “bad” or “weak” or “flawed”), as you fall into the loving arms of the Universe. You will be caught by the strength of pure Love, that has never, ever let you go in the first place. You are never alone. I hope that today, if you needed to read this, oh strong, amazing, dependable one, that you hear it as if it were a message from God above, and it reverberates all of the way down to the depths of your soul, and it stays there for eternity. Every part of you is loved. You are whole and you are loved. You are amazing, all the way around.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.