Ashley Judd hopes her mom Naomi Judd was able to make peace with their complicated relationship before she died.
On July 26, the Double Jeopardy actress, 54, shared that although things between she and the "Love Can Build a Bridge" singer were rocky when she was younger, she did not hold any animosity towards her mom before the 76-year-old died by suicide in April.
"I look back at my childhood and I realized, I grew up with a mom who had an undiagnosed and untreated mental illness and there are different behavioral expressions and interactions," Ashley said on the Healing with David Kessler podcast. "Choices that she made that I understand were an expression of the disease and I understand that and know that she was in pain and can today, understand that she was absolutely doing the best that she could. And if she could have done it differently she would have, you know."
Ashley added that her "most ardent wish" for Naomi is that "when she transitioned, she was hopefully able to let go of any guilt or shame that she carried for any shortcoming."
The High Crimes star previously spoke out about her flawed relationship with her mother in her 2011 memoir All That is Bitter and Sweet. In the biography, Ashley wrote how Naomi and her husband Larry Strickland "were wildly sexually inappropriate" in front of her and her sister Wynonna Judd during the early part of their marriage.
And during an appearance on Today later that year, Ashley said that she grew up in a "dysfunctional family system that didn't work well."
However, the actress no longer holds resentment against her mother and said that she knows Naomi "tried very hard" despite struggling with mental illness. Ashley is now working to keep the pain from reaching the next generation.
"What I know for myself is that it takes a robust recovery program to be the woman that I am today, and I want wellness and vitality and, you know, to have the greatest chance at happiness that I can," she shared. "And my family just happens to come from a lot of grief, a lot of trauma. We're pushing back against generations of hurt and I believe it's in me to do things differently."