Ashley Judd reflects on a year filled with sadness

When I asked her about this during our conversation, Mrs. Judd looked down and closed her eyes, silent for nearly 10 seconds. She seemed to stabilize herself, searching for the right words.

“Grief hurts in a very special way,” she said. “And isolation makes it worse.”

For years, Naomi Judd’s mental illness went undiagnosed and untreated. (Her final diagnoses were post-traumatic stress disorder and bipolar disorder, Ms. Judd said.) Naomi lived with wounds stemming from her childhood, Ms. Judd said, in which Naomi had experienced sexual abuse, teenage pregnancy and the loss of her hair. brother, who died of Hodgkin lymphoma at age 17. In adulthood, Ms. Judd said Naomi had dealt with addiction, domestic violence and crippling depression.

Ms. Judd says she had her own painful experiences during her childhood, including rape, neglect and sexual abuse at the hands of a male relative, who lived in her 2012 memoir. As a teenager, Ms. Judd said, she had lived on her own for two different years in high school while her mother and sister, Wynonna Judd, performed together as the country music duo The Judds.

“I grew up very isolated in my home and I was the lost child in our family system,” she said.

This made for a dysfunctional and at times frustrating and painful mother-daughter relationship. “I came through my anger authentically,” Ms. Judd said. “I naturally got through it, and it was justified anger.” It took her time (and therapy) to build a more positive relationship with her mother. In her late thirties, Ms. Judd said she began to focus on the love Naomi could give, rather than the things her mental illness prevented her from doing.

“I was powerless over my childhood,” Mrs. Judd said. “The survival strategies I developed made my adult life unmanageable. When I took responsibility for those survival strategies, my relationship with both my parents changed and healed.