Ashley Judd Writes Essay About Her Mother, Everyone's

A week after her mother's death, Ashley Judd has written an essay about the struggles Naomi Judd faced during her life, noting that many of them are shared by women around the world. Her mother fought anxiety and depression before committing suicide, CNN reports. With her daughter Wynonna, Naomi Judd formed the Grammy-winning country music duo the Judds. Ashley Judd had planned to visit on Sunday and observe the family tradition of bringing her mother a box of old-fashioned candy, she wrote in USA Today. "Instead, I am unmoored," she said.

Naomi Judd's unplanned pregnancy when she was 17 "led her down a road familiar to so many adolescent mothers, including poverty and gender-based violence," the actress wrote. It's a little less painful at the moment, she said, to consider the issues facing mothers "in the collective"—high maternal death rates, for example. Judd didn't directly mention the abortion debate but wrote: "Motherhood should always be a choice. Does that sound radical to you?" She also called for motherhood to be safe and healthy the world over. "This Mother's Day, I choose to honor my mama for the person she was, a mother and so much more," Judd wrote. "And I ask you to honor your own mother, if you are lucky enough to have her." (More Naomi Judd stories.)