Ashley Judd recalls finding late mom Naomi after suicide

Anderson Cooper and Ashley Judd bonded over talking about the suicides of their beloved family members.

Judd was on Wednesday’s episode of Cooper’s CNN podcast, “All There Is with Anderson Cooper,” to discuss the death of her mother, Naomi Judd, who died by suicide in 2022.

Cooper’s brother, Carter, died by suicide in 1988 by jumping off the terrace of his mother Gloria Vanderbilt’s 14th-floor Manhattan apartment. He was 23.

Judd said that her mother’s death was “traumatic and unexpected because it was death by suicide and I found her.”

Still, she told Cooper she was “so glad” that she was there.

“Even when I walked in that room and I saw that she had harmed herself, the first thing out of my mouth was, ‘Momma, I see how much you’ve been suffering and it is OK … I am here, and it is OK to let go.’ “

“And she heard you?” Cooper asked.

“Oh, she heard me,” Ashley replied. “And I just got into bed and held her and talked to her and said, ‘Let it all go, be free, all is forgiven long ago. All is forgiven long ago. Leave it all here, take nothing with you just be free.’ ” (The country singer was also mom to fellow musician Wynonna Judd.)

Cooper, 56, then teared up talking about Carter’s death.

“I’m here Anderson,” Judd said.

“One of the things I have found so hard about losing my brother to suicide was, I get stuck in how his life ended and the violence of it,” Cooper said — before asking Judd if the violence of her mother’s death made her wonder how well she knew her.

Naomi died by a self-inflicted gunshot wound in her Tennessee home in April 2022. She was 76.

“I really honor the place in you that’s coming from,” Judd said in response. “I think we all deserve to be remembered for how we lived, and how we died is simply part of a bigger story.”

After Naomi’s death, her family said in a statement that “We have always shared openly both the joys of being family as well as its sorrows, too. One part of our story is that our matriarch was dogged by an unfair foe.

“She was treated for PTSD and bipolar disorder, to which millions of Americans can relate.”

The “Double Jeopardy” actress described her feeling of “living on the braid” a metaphorical place where grief meets transcendence.

“I still find it very hard to allow myself to cry, but I feel like there is a well of tears even now, as I’m speaking to you just beneath the surface, that could very easily explode,” she said to Cooper.

“And it comes in these waves and it has so many different characteristics. You know, one of the things that I want to offer is that I have learned how to hold my own hand and my crying, and there is a place where trauma and grief and transcendence meet, and I call it the braid.”

In July, Cooper posted an Instagram tribute to Carter on the 35th anniversary of his death.

“It is 35 years today since my brother, Carter Cooper, died,” Cooper wrote underneath a childhood photo of himself and Carter.

“I think of him, and miss him, every day.”