River of Time

by Naomi Judd

  It was well into my adult life when I realized that I had grown up with an alcoholic father, which explained so much of his sullen moods, unwillingness to communicate, and separation from the family. What I understood is that I had picked up on Mother’s cues to not press any buttons that might cause drama in the house. I learned my lessons well from her. I’ve had chronic codependency issues in my own relationships, which arose from my fear of being alone. My codependency has been the topic of many therapeutic hours for me. I could see how it contributed fully to my depression and anxiety once my performing career had lurched to a standstill.

  There’s a “home group” of about twenty-five people who gather for meetings, often in local churches. We make up a wide range of personalities and social status. One man is a billionaire and another is a guy who’s building a small cabin to live in on his Social Security payments. No matter what their current life situation, it becomes obvious very quickly that problems are something all of us must face. The meetings are a great way to find fellowship with other people who can understand what you’re going through, no matter how dark it is. I’ve shown up to this group feeling angry, frustrated, or hopeless and halfway through the meeting found that someone else was going through similar feelings.

  Al-Anon (or one of the other Anonymous groups) is a dedicated support group that is there in a nonjudgmental way on days when you feel in control and, most helpfully, on days when you feel the lowest. Some of the topics that might be discussed in an Al-Anon meeting: excessive caretaking of another person, detaching with love, codependency, releasing the need to control, and self-blame. All of the topics encourage introspection and lead to deeper self-understanding.

  I find “The Serenity Prayer,” spoken at Al-Anon meetings, to be a calming reminder that the best approach to all of our problems is wisdom.

  God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change;

  Courage to change the things I can;

  And wisdom to know the difference.

  —Reinhold Niebuhr

  Making an effort to be around other people began slowly to dissolve the stigma I had felt about my depression. I had sequestered myself away for month after month, feeling ashamed of my inability to “snap out of it.” I have pride and didn’t want anyone to feel sorry for me. I was to learn later, through therapy, that a common reaction to depression is isolation. You feel so alone in your horrible pain that you keep to yourself. Unfortunately, we create our own prison, locking ourselves away, when what we need most is love, understanding of the disease, and interaction. This can only happen by finding ways to step out of our isolation.

  One evening I was driving home from an Al-Anon meeting, after having hugged almost everyone in the group, when a memory came back to me that reminded me of the life-and-death necessity of giving and receiving affection. Early in my career as an RN, I was working my shift in the pediatrics ward. A little boy, who was small for his age, was admitted to the hospital suffering from malnutrition. His eyes were dull and he lay on the bed motionless, staring up at the ceiling. When I asked the attending physician what the child’s diagnosis was, he showed me the words he had written on the boy’s chart: “Failure to Thrive Syndrome.” His parents were both drug addicts, and they had never held or cuddled him. They did not bond with their son and he was wasting away. My heart broke in a million pieces for this little guy. He was dying from a lack of human connection and love.

  Human touch is as important to the body and soul as food and water. More and more people are coming to realize that having regular contact with others helps us to live happier, more satisfying, and even longer lives.

  Dr. Dean Ornish’s fascinating book, Love and Survival, is one of my personal favorites. For years he studied why human beings need each other. What he found is that isolation is more of a risk to the health of our hearts than smoking, obesity, and a sedentary lifestyle. Dean has been a friend for several decades now, and one time when he was at my farm he told me that anyone without significant friendships is two times more likely to die seven to ten years early than someone who has developed a close network of friends. Our brains are hardwired to connect with each other. It’s his professional advice that we have at least seven to ten contacts with other people every single week.

  According to the last Current Population Survey from the U.S. Census Bureau, 27 percent of Americans live alone. There’s nothing wrong with that, unless it leaves you isolated and feeling like you have no community. It needs to be a priority to stay involved with other people, even when you don’t feel like it. More than soothing loneliness, having a sense of connection to others has been shown to be a preventative approach for health issues like heart disease, ulcers, and possibly dementia, as it keeps our minds active.

  Human touch soothes us. It activates the release of our love and compassion hormone, oxytocin. As Michelangelo already knew in the sixteenth century, “To touch can be to give life.” Modern studies and science have proven his words to be true.

  One of the most curative and healing occurrences for me, over the past two years, has been spending more time with Ashley. She perceived that I needed the security and stability that being in her presence provided for me. When we were together, Ashley would hold my hand. Anytime she was sitting beside me, she would put her arm around my shoulders. She would hug me “hello” and “goodbye” and say how much she loved me.

  Another dependable comfort for me was having Larry continue with his daily morning routine, no matter what the night before had held for me. I could count on knowing that Larry would have the coffee made and be sitting at the kitchen table reading his scriptures. After taking the dogs outside and checking the horses, he would always give me the scoop on what had occurred in our “wild kingdom” overnight. Often his updates would bring a smile to my face.

  One morning he returned to the house laughing. He had gone to feed our barn cats from the sealed plastic bin where he keeps their dry food, only to find that a raccoon had managed to pry it open, climb in, and gorge himself on so much cat food that he could only lie there staring up at Larry over his protruding belly. Having Larry so unwavering in his routine reminded me that life didn’t have to be a daily struggle of emotional ups and downs, that it could also be enjoyable again.

  Larry represented a steadfast flow of consistency and a calm manner in his approach to day-to-day life. This was healing for me. As my therapist, Diana, said to me, people with post-traumatic stress disorder are so familiar with feeling and perceiving drama both internally and externally that they tend unconsciously to look for more things to upset them. We have become so accustomed to the adrenaline rush that trauma has deposited in our nervous systems that we have become addicted to chronic chaos.

  Acupuncture became my “go-to” therapy for calming down my nervous system. When I had hepatitis C, I tried every healing modality available because modern medicine had nothing to offer me. The treatment of hep C has advanced greatly since the early 1990s, but at that time I was on my own… once again.

  I returned for acupuncture treatments to my favorite certified medical doctor, Dr. Xiao Mei Zhao. She was a bit shocked at my appearance, twenty pounds lighter, gaunt, and with barely any hair on my head. She was taken aback, but not discouraged. Chinese medicine has been used successfully to treat both acute and chronic illnesses for more then three thousand years. Dr. Zhao believes in it fully and has decades of knowledge about acupuncture stored in her brilliant mind. As she had explained to me, “If pain exists, either physical or mental, then your energy is trapped and stagnant. There is no free flow.”

  Acupuncture works on the healthy energy by the insertion of very thin needles along the body’s meridians. The meridians are related to each of the main organs. It’s a holistic approach that works with your own inner forces and immune system to cure what ails you. As I like to joke, “Just a little jab will do ya!”

  After a few weekly treatments, Dr. Zhao consulted with me on my post-traumatic stress disord
er. She said it was persistently stored in my system because I had gone so long without having it released. From her Eastern healing perspective, she told me, “The main treatment for depression always involves identifying and containing your memories and putting them in the right place.” You can’t be free of your negative memories, but they don’t need to influence your day-to-day decisions or life anymore.

  The “right place” is far away from your nervous system and stored in your brain under the category of history, a time that is gone and no longer needs to affect your current feelings.

  I’ve found that acupuncture has been beneficial in helping me relax more fully. It eases my anxiety and I know it has helped me detox from some of the side effects of the unhelpful prescription drugs I was put on over the course of a year and a half. A good acupuncturist will listen fully to you and treat your worst symptoms first.

  There are well-qualified acupuncturists even practicing in small towns now. You may be able to find one who can work on a sliding scale or might cut their rate if you buy in bulk, say 15 percent off five treatments. You can always ask.

  The other form of healing touch that I began as a way to treat the stress of depression and anxiety was to have a massage every other week.

  What my massage therapist helped me understand is that the sympathetic nervous system is overactivated when you have anxiety or depression or both. Our body’s way of dealing with stress or perceived danger is the “fight-or-flight” reaction. Our heart rate increases and a surge in adrenaline courses through our system. Our blood flow goes to our limbs because our body believes it’s time to run to escape danger. Our brains can’t tell the difference between a real threat and a memory of a traumatic experience, which is why our bodies suffer with every memory of trauma. Massage therapy gives a boost to the parasympathetic system, which works in the opposite way of the sympathetic nervous system by lowering blood pressure, increasing overall blood flow, calming the digestive system, and soothing our pain receptors and nerves. It reminds you from the top of your head to the tip of your toes that you’re a whole body, not just a head dragging a body around.

  For myself, to relax completely, I need to feel that I don’t have to converse with my massage therapist once I lie down on the massage table. It’s important to let in the healing and that’s hard to do if you feel obligated to hold up your end of a conversation.

  I’ve actually asked massage therapists to please not say a word. It helps me not feel drained by their energy field.

  My massage therapist, Kilie, has helped me tremendously over the last year and a half. At the beginning of our appointment, she listens intently to my current state of mind. She plays some soft music and stops talking completely until the massage is finished. She chooses an essential oil, like calming eucalyptus oil, to add to her massage oil based on how I described what I was feeling. The aromatherapy factor has its own healing effect. Practitioners of aromatherapy believe that the fragrance of the oil stimulates the part of the brain that controls our emotional memories. Depending on the fragrance used, the oil can be stimulating or relaxing. For example, peppermint can make you feel more alert, lemon oil produces a feeling of joy, lavender relaxes and helps you sleep, and smelling grapefruit oil helps to reduce the feeling of hunger.

  Thanks to all of these different approaches to healing, as Larry noticed, I was improving day by day, with far fewer setback days. About once a week I would spiral downward into a feeling of hopelessness. On those days I would remember Diana’s advice to make a list of pleasant activities and do at least one or two of them. On my list are things like: reading a science magazine, listening to music I love, spending time outside in our meditation garden, playing with the dogs, sorting photos, or organizing my kitchen cupboards and utensil drawers. The prescribed medications from Dr. Rosenbaum seemed to be leveling out the deepest lows and providing a platform from which to do more self-work with Diana through dialectical behavior therapy.

  One afternoon, I spent a couple hours with Ashley at a mall. We wanted to pick up some yard games and toys for the kids who attend the family of choice Sunday picnics. We were having a fun mother-daughter time when my eyes landed on a Hello Kitty carrying case for pens, pencils, and crayons. A memory came back in full force of a time when having enough money to buy my own children toys was out of the question. I remembered how Ashley, at about age eight, picked up a Hello Kitty lunchbox when we had gone into a discount store for the bare necessities.

  She carried it with her throughout the store, swinging it happily at her side.

  When we got into the checkout line, I had to break the bad news to my little girl that she couldn’t have the seven-dollar lunchbox. Seven dollars would buy two packages of lunch meat, canned soup, and vegetables, which would be two meals for all three of us. She didn’t whine or beg or even shed a tear. She merely ran back to put it on the shelf where she had found it. I knew it was a big deal for her. I knew every other little girl in her class had a new lunchbox, while my girls carried their sandwiches in leftover brown bags.

  With the painful memory came a tear that I wiped away quickly. I didn’t want to ruin our afternoon. But once we got back to the car, I presented my adult daughter with the Hello Kitty carry case. I knew she no longer would want one, but I had to do it for both of us. Ashley smiled softly in recognition.

  I told Larry about this story when I returned home. He nodded, but stayed silent. He is the girls’ Pop and he loves them both as much as I do. Later that evening, Larry said, “I’ve got something I need to do. Mary will come over and watch TV with you. I won’t be long.”

  I didn’t know where he was planning to go; I only noticed the look of resolve on his face. He was on a mission.

  Chapter 19

  Every Ending Is a New Beginning

  Wynonna’s coming over for dinner tomorrow night,” Larry said almost nonchalantly when he came home. He turned around and called for the dogs, to take them out one more time before bedtime.

  “She hasn’t come over in almost a year,” I said, stunned. I followed Larry to the door. “What have you been up to?”

  Larry took my hands in his. “I couldn’t stand by and watch you be heartbroken anymore. Being estranged from Wy has played a big part in your depression. It’s time for things to get better between you two.”

  I assumed Larry had probably shared with Wy quite a bit about what I had been going through. I also knew he was right.

  The following evening I cooked Wy’s favorite meal of chicken “Continental,” a savory dish of browned chicken baked with seasoned rice, green Jell-O salad, asparagus, and hot rolls. When she arrived, we hugged warmly. We didn’t talk about our relationship issues, because we needed to be in each other’s presence for a while without turmoil. There was still a silent wall between us, but at least we were in the same room.

  We had a pleasant evening as a family and I got to hear a lot about her upcoming tour. It pained my heart a little to know I wouldn’t be a part of it, but I decided that I had to “radically accept” that she was now a successful solo act. Actually, she had been a hit solo act for years before our reuniting as the Judds for the Encore tour.

  By the end of the evening, I was calm and had a deeper understanding of why our relationship has had its bumps and bruises. More than anyone else in my life, Wynonna had been with me through every trial and triumph that defined the person I became, both publicly and privately. From the time I was an eighteen-year-old new mother, through my divorce, abandonment, financial struggles, physical and mental assaults, heartbreaks, many relocations, educational quests, fears, and feats of courage, Wynonna was a witness to all of it. Then, when we teamed up to “sing for our supper,” striving to be noticed and pay our dues in the music industry, we did it together, sometimes with wisdom but mostly by our bare wits. When you share a forty-five-foot-long tour bus as your home for most of a decade, there are no secrets. We knew everything about each other. We created shows, we wrote songs, we rehearsed, we argued
, we laughed, we defended each other, we looked out for each other, and we cared deeply about our fans. Besides Ashley, there really was no one else who truly understood what it took for us to get where we were. The many awards we won were icing on a cake that was made with hard-earned ingredients. I was extremely proud of the career we built together. I didn’t want the bond to be broken.

  However, I am no longer that young woman, using every ounce of my natural determination and grit to make something of myself. I did, already. I need only to look around me to see what the sowing of my hard work over the decades has reaped. I didn’t need to be afraid of abandonment and loss anymore. And Wynonna is no longer the talented teenager I needed to protect, push, and promote, to advise and assist with problems. She’s an adult woman in her fifties, with grown children, a happy marriage, and at the peak of her creative journey as a solo artist. Even if I weren’t her mother, I would say that Wynonna has one of the most captivating, soul-filled, world-class voices to ever grace a stage. I miss being with her, but I would never want her to miss out on accomplishing everything her talent deserves.

  I know that now we each have a very different perspective of reality. They don’t match up well. It takes extra effort for Wy to understand my reality and where I’m coming from, and for me to understand hers. Wy and I could not possibly be more different in our most elemental natures, with the exception of both being headstrong women. Being an “odd couple” onstage has always worked in our favor because the fans seemed to love the unpredictable banter and the contrast between mother and daughter, yet it isn’t easy offstage. Coming to understand and accept this has been a relief and has helped me to stop always wishing it could be different. I won’t ever change her reality and the only thing that makes sense is for me to be clear about my own priorities and boundaries. I knew that I had to “radically accept” that concept, stop trying to defend myself, and stop asking her to justify her viewpoints. They are what they are. We are both right according to our own realities. Our own perception is our reality.