by Ashley Judd
Like many folks, I have a wonderfully deep relationship with animals. They anchor and structure my world. Their unconditional love and four-legged wisdom enriches my life and helps me heal. They provide the connection, the spirit of play and rest, and the acceptance that transcends all doing, all circumstance. My animal companions give me the gift of needing my love—and I have love in abundance. Percy, for example, was a stunning gray point kitty with whom I shared my pillow each night for years. We held hands as we slept (Dario would take pictures, showing me in the morning) and ate off the same plate. Percy never took his eyes off me, thereby giving me at long last what my parents had been unable to sustain during my childhood, that invaluable feeling of being the center of somebody’s world. The animals provide my routine, keep my moorings, and keep me in relationship with other beings at all times. It’s not possible to isolate myself for long or stay caught up in either the vainglories or morbid reflections of life when animals are nearby. And that is one of the reasons animals are often prescribed by doctors for emotional support.
We had dogs and cats growing up, but I moved around so much that I hardly remember many by name. There was Mule the hound dog when we lived in Berea, and Cotton, my beloved little tomcat who sprayed my cheerleader pom-poms in high school. The first dog I ever loved with tender devotion was Banjo (we called him a Heinz 57 mix), whom Mom and Pop, my stepfather, bought when I was in college and let me share as if he were my own. He was the greatest dog ever, until the King, aka Buttermilk, came along.
After wrapping Double Jeopardy in 1998 following a long spell in Vancouver, British Columbia, I came home to my newly restored farmhouse, and one afternoon Mom materialized at the door, standing there with a bright, sly smile on her face.
“I have a wrap gift for you!” she sang out.
I rolled my eyes. “How much does it weigh?” I knew it was a dog, and I was unsure this would suit me. I’d never had a dog as an adult, and cats were really my thing. She began to gush and presented me with a beautiful fluffy yellow cockapoo puppy, without a doubt the sweetest, most adorable, easy-to-make-the-center-of-my-life animal imaginable. Although I didn’t want to show her how pleased I was, I was smitten.
I named him for his creamy yellow curls that reminded me of the foamy bubbles that collect at the edges of a milk pail, and because buttermilk with a skillet of cornbread is, as far as I am concerned, a staple of life, as he has become for me. We were inseparable from the start, and he was forgiving and patient with me as I struggled to learn the art of raising a canine. I was aghast when he peed on my bed while we were playing. A cat would never do that! We tried crate training, but it was agony. He howled so plaintively, so relentlessly, when separated from me that there was no doubt he would be sleeping in the bed.
Dario understands when I say that Buttermilk is the great love of my life. I know Buttermilk better than I have known any human, and he surely knows me better than anyone. I call him my thighbone; we sleep alongside each other every night, with him positioned alongside my leg so that my hand rests upon him throughout the night. His baby sister, Shug, came along, and little did I know I had the capacity, the space, inside of me to love that way again. But I did, and she expands my soul. Shug falls asleep stretched out on her back, placed down the middle of me, the back of her head tucked under my chin, her little tail lined up with my belly button. Heaven for us both.
When I meet new people at parties, I am often asked if I have any children. Most folks consider it a harmless small-talk opener, and rather than be rude or get too personal, I usually give a laugh and say, “No, we have pets.” This is the truth—in our household animals are full family members—but the whole story is far more complicated. The fact is that I have chosen not to have children because I believe the children who are already here are really mine, too. I do not need to go making “my own” babies when there are so many orphaned or abandoned children who need love, attention, time, and care. I have felt this way since I was at least eighteen and I had an argument about it with a childhood friend. He maintained that people with “our genes and opportunities are the very people who should have kids;” I countered that folks with our awareness and ability to contribute should instead focus on the children already born and suffering so needlessly. I figured it was selfish for us to pour our resources into making our “own” babies when those very resources and energy could not only help children already here, but through advocacy and service transform the world into a place where no child ever needs to be born into poverty and abuse again. My belief has not changed. It is a big part of who I am.
Over the years I have quietly “adopted” many children in America and in different parts of the global South—a better term for the developing world—sending money for health care, food, schooling, and shelter in ways that are appropriate for the places where they live and which improve their chances for better lives. But it wasn’t until 2002, when a stranger named Kate Roberts contacted me at just the right time, asking me to join just the right campaign, that I saw an opportunity to impact—beyond donations—the lives of millions of children and young people I already considered part of my own family.
The letter was an appeal for me to become the global ambassador for YouthAIDS, the HIV/AIDS prevention programs at Population Services International, a nonprofit public health organization. My job would be to raise awareness and funds for PSI’s programs, which target the most poor and vulnerable populations in the world. Would I consider traveling around the world, representing the organization?
This seemed like an enormous request, but I was intrigued. What I could not yet know was that this letter would not only begin a rich, life-changing education, but would also launch me on the path toward my own healing.
Chapter 4
THROUGH THE TRAPDOOR
Pursued by paparazzi, I nonetheless stop to befriend a dog.
Where I came from, the nights I had wandered and survived, scared them, and where
I would go they never imagined.
—MARGE PIERCY, “Always Unsuitable”
he invitation from Population Services International arrived at what seemed to be a very inconvenient time. My acting career was at such a frenzied peak that I had starred in six movies in the past four years and I felt as if I were being pulled in ten directions at once. In the summer of 2002, when I began filming a noir thriller called Twisted in and around San Francisco, I was as successful, and as sick and tired, as I had ever been in my life.
Twisted should have been an enjoyable movie to make. I was excited to be working with director Phil Kaufman, a remarkable auteur who had directed The Unbearable Lightness of Being. I had wonderful support from my costars Andy Garcia and Sam Jackson—both of whom happen to be among the kindest, funniest, and most generous artists in show business. But it turned out to be a difficult shoot, with seemingly endless night scenes, and as the weeks wore on, I grew more miserable. It probably didn’t help that my character was a depressed homicide inspector with a nasty temper; a lonely woman who was consumed by unresolved trauma from her past. She medicated herself with alcohol while—and here’s the thriller part—her casual sex partners were murdered one after the other.
The role was physically demanding and draining, as were the logistics of the locations all over the Bay Area. One frigid morning I would be clambering over rocks to stare at a waxy corpse bobbing in the bay; that night I’d be in a police gym, training to fight like a cop. The length of the shoot precluded me from finding a rental property for the duration. The constant shuttling between sets and temporary dwellings left me feeling continually nervous and adrift. I was disconcerted by a sensation of always being in transition, always on the threshold of something else. It was disturbingly familiar. Without realizing it, I was reprising the pain and uncertainty of my dysfunctional childhood living arrangements, where I never knew what to expect next. This unwelcome déjà vu was fueled by the fact that my rental homes were in Marin County, just north of San Francisco, where I
had spent those two soul-destroying years in third and fourth grade.
My anxiety that summer was compounded by the added stress of being apart from my husband for a few weeks at a time. I typically spend a lot of time with Dario during his racing seasons on the IndyCar circuit. I unabashedly regard my husband as one of the greatest open-wheel racers in history, and having grown up with remarkably gifted people, I find it perfectly natural to passionately support his talent and the rigors that racing at his level demands. I love the rhythm and repetition of going to the same events year after year, the arc each race weekend entails, from preparation to practice to qualifying to racing. But film schedules are rigid, like the racing calendar. Dario often flew thousands of miles to be with me between his races, and I cheered up when he was around: We would hike the Marin headlands or he would take long rides on his bicycle, and we often had company when both local friends and family came to visit. However, I was relying on him too much to stabilize my moods, and I found his comings and goings between races to be very hard.
I was plagued by insomnia, a condition I have lived with since childhood, which used to worsen when I was unsettled. Eventually my anxiety kept ratcheting up even when Dario was with me. I tried to make everything perfect for him: the right turkey for his sandwiches, the latest video games in my trailer, as if somehow that would make him happier, and if he were happier, maybe he’d magically be able to stay longer, and if he stayed longer, maybe I wouldn’t have anxiety. Follow? On the set, I was obsessing about my shooting schedule, making myself a nuisance to the hardworking production staff by constantly bargaining for later call times because I was so exhausted. I kept telling myself I would feel better if I could just … get fifteen minutes more sleep, come to work later, squeeze in this personal appointment, or whatever.
This pattern of trying to control my environment is an old coping mechanism that I developed during my chaotic childhood. By trying to arrange everything outside of me to be “just so,” I could occasionally secure a modicum of emotional and mental relief from the pain inside. And because it worked sometimes, and I had no other tools, I continued attempting to manage everything more and more, in pursuit of the ephemeral relief. By 2002, these survival skills were working against me. My emotional life was increasingly unmanageable. I was sick and tired of being so tired—I fought it all the time—but I had no idea what was really wrong with me, and I didn’t know how to change the cycle, even though I desperately wanted to.
I was never treated for the “spells,” as I called them, that had started when I was about eight years old, and I would lie in bed for hours on end, day after day. Nobody in my family seemed to notice, and I never mentioned it to anyone because I was being taught that my needs and wants were too much, that they were not okay. I had no idea there might be help for a child like me. The episodes continued as I grew older. I never knew when I would “fall through the trapdoor,” as I have come to characterize my episodes of depression, and what might trigger my free fall, and my stays in the lonely hell of depression were of unpredictable duration. I might rally in a day or two, or I might be down for three months. During an especially despondent stretch of time, when I was in grades six through ten and living with Mom, Pop, and Sister in an old farmhouse south of Nashville that I used to refer to simply as “the Hell Hole,” my young heart was in so much pain that when Mom wasn’t periodically pulling out the gun she kept under the bed to threaten Pop, I often played with it, trying to summon the courage to shoot myself. On into my twenties and thirties, I had periods of falling through the trapdoor, and I tried to lift my moods and self-soothe with alternative regimens like breathwork (therapeutic controlled breathing), meditation, and yoga.
I was first exposed to yoga when I was a little girl. Mamaw loved taking yoga classes at the YWCA in Ashland, Kentucky. She gave me a book I still have and treasure, with pictures of an animal on one page and a child doing the yoga posture named for that animal on the companion page. I would practice the poses because it was fun, especially on rainy days when she did not take me to the pool, and I dabbled in it over the years. I started a regular practice in 1994, while I was living alone in New York and performing in Picnic on Broadway. It was a bad time for me. I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t shake the relentless despair, I was eaten alive with anxiety, and I was desperately groping for some kind of psychic relief. I intuitively took myself to a yoga class. In the practice, I was seeking restorative poses, the ones in Mamaw’s book, like the child’s pose, turtle, and rabbit. They soothe, nurture, and hold the body safe; they are calming to the nervous system—things I surely needed.
The yoga was indeed wonderful for my body and spirit, and the meditation was momentarily calming, but neither was the panacea I’d hoped for. Once more, in the fall of 1996, depression took me down a dangerous path. This time, instead of insomnia, I couldn’t seem to sleep enough. My mood was desolate, and I couldn’t stop losing weight, no matter how much I ate. I attributed most of the exhaustion I felt to a busy work schedule. After the Broadway show, I’d been filming steadily, often working back to back on productions that, however exciting, were also wearing. A Time to Kill opened in the summer of 1996, I had gone straight into Norma Jean and Marilyn, and Kiss the Girls had just wrapped when my baseline mood deteriorated so badly I could do nothing to hold ground.
I was going out with Michael Bolton that fall. Although we dated for only about six weeks, he made a poignant impression on my life. In October I accompanied him to Austria, where he was performing at the Vienna State Opera. I had some clothes fitted before the trip, and by the end of the short stay, they were hanging off me. I slept all day long in the gilded hotel room. Michael would go to rehearsal in the mornings, and I would be waking up when it was time for dinner. I attributed my lethargy to jet lag. Michael proved to be a compassionate and gentle friend. He never tried to push me or shame me; he just left me to my own process. Days later, I began to wonder, Why can’t I get out of bed? Where does the time go? Then, by the grace of God, I somehow remembered a questionnaire I had seen in a doctor’s office waiting room. It was a checklist for depression. Things like “Persistent, sad, anxious, or ‘empty’ mood. Unexplained weight loss. Feelings of hopelessness, guilt, worthlessness. Thoughts of harming oneself. Hyper- or hyposomnia …” I didn’t know if I identified with everything, but I identified with enough.
At last, here was an explanation, a name, an actionable thing: depression!
Inspired, I moved faster than I had in days. I practically clawed my way to the telephone to call a therapist I casually knew in Franklin, Tennessee, to suggest a doctor who could prescribe medication. Franklin was the closest thing I had to a fixed address. I had been essentially homeless for the past three years, after the house I’d been renting in Malibu burned to the ground in a wildfire, with all my possessions inside (except Mamaw’s pearls, which I had thankfully been wearing at the time), while I was on the Ruby in Paradise press tour. Because I was constantly working at the time, I was living out of hotel rooms, rented homes on locations; and between jobs, because my farmhouse restoration was a long-term project, squatting either at Mom and Pop’s or at Sister’s.
As soon as I returned home and dropped my bags in my mom’s guest room, I went to see the psychiatrist my therapist friend had recommended. I remember feeling incredibly vulnerable in this strange new setting as I shared what I knew then of my story. I waited expectantly to hear her verdict.
“You have mild, anxious depression.”
My first thought was, If this is mild, I cannot even imagine what major is. I am nonfunctional, and this is mild?
“Where does it come from?” I asked.
“Unresolved childhood grief.”
Silence.
“Okay, what do I take for that?”
I wanted medication. I had suffered enough that I was willing to try it. I was radically grateful for anything that resembled a viable solution to the problem I had lived with for so long, which until now had not even had
a name. She gave me a prescription, and I went home and read the molecular formula and studied the insert. Would it work faster if I took it in the morning? Or at night? On an empty stomach? Or a full stomach? Following the doctor’s suggestion, I started a mood journal to keep track of things so I could give her clear data during our check-ins. Then I just lay in bed, waiting to see if I felt different.
A few days later, I started feeling wildly restless and insatiably hungry. I needed so much food during this time, I would eat raw tofu straight from the package (I was a vegetarian then). In spite of eating like a horse, I continued to lose weight, and I eventually bottomed at 112 pounds, which is far too thin for my five-foot-seven-inch frame (a healthy weight for me is 130 pounds). In the middle of one night, I heard a distinct, piercing cry and bolted straight up from a dead sleep before realizing the noise was coming from me. I had started wailing like a banshee. Mom and Pop’s dog, Banjo, who was asleep next to me, went flying off the bed in a panic—I nearly scared him to death. I probably would have terrified myself if I could have considered that disturbing stream of anguish, what it was and where it was coming from. I was purging grief. It lasted over an hour. Confusing words erupted out of me unbidden, things like “I was just a little girl, it wasn’t my fault” and “Why did you leave me at school? I was so little, I couldn’t get home!” and the plaintive refrain of my childhood, “Where is everybody?”