Wynonna Judd Mourns Mom Naomi on Mother’s Day

Wynonna Judd marked the first Mother’s Day without her mother Naomi Judd on Sunday with a heartbreaking and simple post on Instagram. Judd, 57, and half-sister Ashley Judd, 54, announced their mother’s death on Saturday, April 30. Naomi was 76 and died the day before she and Judd were inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville.

Judd shared an old photo of herself with her mother and Ashley on Instagram. “I miss her,” Judd wrote. The post drew comments from across the country music world, with many offering their condolences.

“I’m so so sorry…sending prayers up for you and your family,” Jenee Fleenor wrote. “Love you Wy,” Brandi Carlile wrote, adding a broken heart emoji. Jessie James Decker and Shania Twain showed their love by posting heart emojis.

Ashley marked her first Mother’s Day without Naomi with a new essay in USA Today. She wrote about Naomi’s journey to becoming a parent and motherhood in general. Ashley noted that Naomi became a mother “without her consent” and was pregnant at 17. This “led her down a road familiar to so many adolescent mothers, including poverty and gender-based violence,” Ashley wrote.

“Forgive me if my grief isn’t tidy,” Ashley wrote. “When I think about my mother, I am awash in the painful specifics. It’s a little easier, this Mother’s Day, to think about mothers in the collective, to wonder whether we value them.”

Ashley asked fans to honor her mother by pushing for policies that make motherhood safer. “This Mother’s Day, I choose to honor my mama for the person she was, a mother and so much more,” Ashley wrote. “And I ask you to honor your own mother if you are lucky enough to have her. Honor her for more than her labor and sacrifice. Honor her for her talents and dreams. Honor her by demanding a world where motherhood, everywhere, is safe, healthy – and chosen.”

Judd and Ashley announced their mother’s death on April 30, hours before The Judds joined the County Music Hall of Fame in Nashville. They said Naomi died from “the disease of mental health,” adding that they 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.”

Ashley and Judd also paid tribute to their mother during the hall of fame induction ceremony on May 1. Ashley shared a photo of the sisters standing in front of The Judds’ plaque. She thanked fans for their outpouring of support. “Thank you for every thought, prayer, message, text, email, post, expression,” Ashley wrote on May 2. “We each are alone and we are in fellowship, broken and held, protected from nothing and sustained in everything. It’s the beginning of an old story, life, and death, loss, and life.”