- - Wynonna Judd Honors Late Mom Naomi Judd in Emotional 80th Birthday Tribute: 'Why Aren't You Here?'

Yamillah HurtadoJanuary 12, 2026 at 5:20 PM

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Wynonna and Naomi Judd in Nashville in April 2022 -

Wynonna Judd honored her mother Naomi on what would have been the country singer’s 80th birthday

“I still feel her everywhere,” Wynonna wrote in an Instagram post shared on Sunday, Jan. 11

Naomi died by suicide on April 30, 2022, at the age of 76

Wynonna Judd honored her late mother Naomi Judd three years after her death with an emotional tribute post.

In a tribute posted to her Instagram account on Sunday, Jan. 11, what would have been her 80th birthday, Wynonna, 66, shared a photo of her kissing her late mother on the cheek. The caption of the post read, “She would have been 80 today. I still feel her everywhere.”

“She has 2 beautiful GREAT granddaughters we could be celebrating with,” Wynonna continued. “Why aren’t you here? I love you, Mom. 🤍”

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Naomi and Wynonna Judd performing at their 'Girls Night Out' residency in Las Vegas in October 2015

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Naomi, who was a part of the iconic country, mother-daughter duo The Judds with Wynonna, died by suicide on April 30, 2022, at the age of 76.

At the time, Wynonna and her younger sister, actress Ashley Judd, 57, announced the news in a joint statement obtained by PEOPLE. Ashley later shared the statement on Instagram.

“Today we sisters experience a tragedy,” they wrote. “We lost our beautiful mother to the disease of mental illness. We are shattered. We are navigating profound grief and know that as we loved her, she was loved by her public. We are in unknown territory.”

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Ashley, Naomi and Wynonna Judd at the Rally for Women's Rights in Afghanistan in Hollywood in March 1999

The country legend struggled with her mental health and suffered from suicidal depression. Naomi publicly spoke about her mental health, even writing about it in her 2016 book, River of Time: My Descent into Depression and How I Emerged with Hope.

"Nobody can understand it unless you've been there," the singer told PEOPLE at the time. "Think of your very worst day of your whole life – someone passed away, you lost your job, you found out you were being betrayed, that your child had a rare disease – you can take all of those at once and put them together and that's what depression feels like."

In her 2022 interview with TODAY, Wynonna told the outlet that the death of their mother brought the sisters closer. “Ashley and I are closer than we’ve been in a long time… We love each other, and we show up for each other,” she said. “We don’t agree on much, but we support one another.”

Ahead of the premiere of the Lifetime docuseries, The Judd Family: Truth Be Told, Naomi's widower, Larry Strickland, told PEOPLE that her death brought the family closer together.

"They were forced together," Strickland said in April 2025. "We all had to come together around this trauma, this tragic event. And it, of course, opened our eyes about how short life can be and how fleeting. Realizing that we lost a wife and mother, it forced us to be together, whether we wanted to or not. It just really drove me closer to them because they're what's left of [Naomi]."

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Source: “AOL Entertainment”