Singer Wynonna Judd is marking Mother’s Day just a week after mom and bandmate Naomi Judd‘s death on April 30. The country music legend, who performed with older daughter Wynonna as the Judds, died at 76 as a result of “the disease of mental illness,” her daughters shared in a statement.
On Sunday, Wynonna, 57, took to Instagram to post a throwback photo from her childhood. The image shows a young Naomi with her arms wrapped around Wynonna and her sister, actress Ashley Judd.
“I miss her,” the country star captioned the family photo.
Judd’s post comes on the heels of an emotional essay written by sister Ashley for USA Today last week. In it, the Heat and Double Jeopardy star wrote of her mother’s legacy ahead of spending “abruptly, shockingly, my first Mother’s Day without my mama.”
“I was supposed to visit her on Sunday, to give her a box of old-fashioned candy, our family tradition,” the actress and activist continued. “We were supposed to have sweet delight in each others’ easy presence. Instead, I am unmoored. But my heart is not empty. It is replete with gratitude for what she left behind. Her nurture and tenderness, her music and memory.”
Judd’s essay, published just days after a leaked Supreme Court draft opinion revealed that Roe v. Wade may be overturned, also reflected on the challenges facing women in terms of motherhood, which she noted “should always be a choice.” She pointed to the hardships Naomi herself had had to overcome as a teen mom at 17.
“My mama was a legend,” Ashley wrote. “She was an artist and a storyteller, but she had to fight like hell to overcome the hand she was dealt, to earn her place in history. She shouldn’t have had to fight that hard to share her gifts with the world.”
She continued, “This Mother’s Day, I choose to honor my mama for the person she was, a mother and so much more. 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.”
