The actress went through a lot of emotional trauma when she was a child and it took her years to overcome it.
Editor’s note: This article was originally published on April 15, 2020. It has since been updated.
Many times, we believe that children born to famous parents would have had the best lives imaginable. But the harsh truth is, the children of those homes are not always happy with the glamour and the lights. They might be craving for a normal childhood. We might think that the grass is greener on the other side but that is not true for all the children of famous parents.
Actress Ashley Judd grew up in a house with a famous parent and sibling, who were The Judds, a country music duo. They won fame, love, and riches from their dedication to their craft but closer home their beloved daughter and sister had an entirely different experience. She did not have stability, felt like a burden, and was abused. The Kiss the Girls actress has had to face her demons for years because the adults did not believe her when she was wronged.
Her mother, Naomi, was a single mother at the age of 18 after her boyfriend Charles Jordan abandoned her. The senior Judds singer gave birth to her first daughter, Wynonna, in 1964, who became the second half of The Judds. Later, Naomi married Michael Ciminella and gave birth to Ashley in 1968. However, they lasted only four years. She ended up raising two daughters alone on a nurse's salary until her career in music took off. Since Ashley was not a singer she was left home with her dad, which made her feel lonely.
She felt complete isolation and was depressed, but didn't realize it. "I looked really good on the outside [but] I had a lot of anxiety and insomnia, and I realized eventually that I was really powerless over my childhood, and the coping strategies that I developed had made my adult life unmanageable," she told Today.
What sent her down this path? The years of neglect she faced while her mother and sister were busy with their musical career. The 51-year-old said that witnessing her mother's relationship with other men after her parents got divorced had traumatized her. After her mom and her father got divorced, Naomi tried to influence her to dislike her father.
"First of all, my mother loves and adores me and my dad absolutely loves and adores me; they did then, and they do now," Judd told Today. "We came from a dysfunctional family system that didn't work very well. So the kinds of things that happened to me are very typical and standard and indicative of a family system that doesn’t work very well," she said.
She called her mom and mom's current husband Larry Strickland, whom she calls "pop", "sexually inappropriate" in her memoir, All That Is Bitter and Sweet, and she opened up about the years of emotional abuse she faced.
"Mom and pop were wildly sexually inappropriate in front of my sister and me. I now know this situation is called covert sexual abuse," she wrote.
Growing up, she faced more difficulties when she was abused by an older man but when she told adults they didn't believe her. The emotional trauma stayed with her for years and only after she took matters into her own hand by seeking therapy in 2006 in Texas did she feel better, ABC reported.
"I was in so much pain that the pain of being willing to change was finally less than the pain of staying the same," she admitted. "And I had so much shame about what I had been through as a kid because it was my fault right? I was the burden, I was the abandoned one. That I was choked on my own shame, I couldn’t even talk about my shame," she told Fox News.
Battling her demons was not enough and she sought a peaceful life. She left Hollywood in 2001 after marrying Dario Franchitti and dedicated most of her time to philanthropy. She spreads awareness about depression and AIDS. However, the couple separated in 2016 and she has taken up a few roles like in the Divergent series.
"...God has used me to be a gift to other vulnerable and suffering children around the world. Which really is a miracle given I once was one of those kids. So I am living hope for depression," she told Fox News.
References:
https://www.today.com/popculture/ashley-judd-reveals-troubled-childhood-sexual-abuse-2D80556311
