Ashley Judd Suffered Painful Injury in Wake of Her Mom Naomi's Death

Ashley Judd has revealed that she suffered a painful injury in the wake of her mom Naomi's death, having fractured her leg. THR reports that Judd revealed the "freak accident" while on a Zoom interview with professor Dr. Jonathan Flint. The pair were speaking for an Open Mind conversation, which is part of a larger series from UCLA's Friends of the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior. "It was what it was," the actress said. 

"Clumsiness is associated with grief," she continued, "and there were other people in our family, after Mom died, who fell down stairs and had accidents, and that's just what mine happened to look like. It really allowed me to grieve. It really allowed me to stop what I was working on at that moment and to grieve." THR noted that Judd's injury was "a fracture of the femoral condyle." Notably, this accident came less than two years after the Double Jeopardy star suffered a "catastrophic" injury during a hiking excursion in the Democratic Republic of Congo, in February 2021. That injury took many months of healing and recovery. Judd noted that her most recent injury, luckily, "healed in two months, lickety-split."

Naomi Judd – who sang in a country music duo with her eldest daughter, Wynonna, for many years – died on April 30, a day that Ashley calls the "most shattering day" of her life. Following Naomi's death, Wynonna and Ashley issued a joint statement, saying, "Today we sisters experienced a tragedy. 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." Notably, on the same weekend, Naomi and Wynonna were inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. 

During the Sunday night induction ceremony, Wynonna and Ashley spoke about their late mother. "My momma loved you so much and she appreciated your love for her and I'm sorry that she couldn't hang on until today," Ashley said while fighting tears. "My heart's broken and I feel so blessed," Wynonna added. "At 2:20, I kissed her on the forehead and I walked away and this is the first place I've been. The last thing we did together as a family was with her, we all gathered around her and we said, 'The Lord is my shepherd.'" Naomi Judd was 76 years old at the time of her death.