And would Ashley have made it in Hollywood without her mother’s support?Īs I grew older, the story of the Judds impressed me, and I saw bits of it in my own life. Naomi’s single motherhood, a nurse trying to score a recording contract, clicked with my view of my newly widowed mother, another country woman, trying to keep it together while still raising children. When cancer visited one of my leg bones after my senior year in high school, I thought of Naomi and her hepatitis diagnosis. I went off to college, got married (well, committed - same-sex marriage wasn’t yet legal in those days) and ended up in New York. Like Naomi, I had persevered and made it out. There, I cultivated a new circle of friends, many of them also from Michigan. One night a Judds song came on, I forget which one, and one of my new friends began singing along. I had to go to all the way to New York City to find my country people. Soon we two couples became inseparable, taking camping trips together several times a summer.
