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'It's a bittersweet time!' Wynonna Judd reflects on one year since her mother Naomi's suicide

Wynonna Judd speaks out one year on from the death of her mother Naomi credit:Bang Showbiz
Wynonna Judd speaks out one year on from the death of her mother Naomi credit:Bang Showbiz

Wynonna Judd wants to help others one year on from her mother's suicide.

The 58-year-old star shot to fame alongside her mother Naomi - who took her own life in April 2022 at the age of 76 after years of suffering from depression - as part of country music duo The Judds in the 1980s and teamed up with her sister Ashley, 54, for a performance of 'I Want To Know What Love Is' at the CMT Awards on Sunday (02.04.23) as she explained that it has been a time of both "agony and ecstasy" one year on from the tragedy.

She told 'Entertainment Tonight': "It's a bittersweet time. I've got both agony and ecstasy happening. It's an anniversary and we all have anniversaries. I'm not terminally unique. We all have something that we look at and go what the hell? What's going on? I don't understand and that was my 'I don't understand.'

"I want to help people. It's like. look at my face. Look at this face, if you're having a crappy day, and just think, 'If I can do it so can you,' because it's not easy."

The 'Love Can Build a Bridge' songstress - whose father is the late Charles Jordan, while Ashley's is Michael Ciminella - admitted towards the end of last year that she had been left "baffled" by her mother's suicide because she had always seemed so "determined" throughout her life.

She told PEOPLE: "I can't quite wrap my head around it and I don't know that I ever will. That she left the way she did. That's how baffling and cunning mental illness is. You have to make peace with the fact that you don't know. Sometimes there are no answers. [My mother] was always so determined. No matter what happened to her. Being fired, being forgotten. Being fired. Being forgotten. A single white female raising two babies by herself. On welfare and food stamps. She never gave up. So think about that and apply it to every stinking part of life, including death. With the same determination she had to live, she was determined to die. It's so hard to comprehend how someone can be so strong and yet so vulnerable."

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