Naomi Judd Interview (page: 5 / 5) Country Music Artist and Social Advocate	Print Interview

From being told you only had a few years to live, you now have a long life ahead of you. What do you want to do with your life?

Naomi Judd: What do I want to do? There's really only two things I haven't done, and that's work for the phone company and be an air traffic controller.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. One of the things that having a life-threatening illness will do for you is it will really stop your program. I was very goal oriented. I would say, "Okay. In five years, I want to have this many Grammys. In five years, I want this many platinum albums and this many number ones. No, I didn't think of it in those terms. I just knew that I wanted to reach more people with Judd music because we feel so strongly about our message and about communicating with people. Since my illness, I live fully in the moment, and a very priceless lesson is in that, because when you practice what is called "life-centered present moment awareness," you're not feeling guilty about something you just did, and you're not anxious or freaked about something that's getting ready to come around the corner at you. You're fully alive, and you're hip to all the blessings, and you're aware of all five of your senses, which is the reason we're here on earth, to really grow in wisdom and grow in love and understand our true nature. I feel so bad for these folks that are just, "Well, how many things can I pencil in my day timer today?" and "How many appointments can I make?" And "Let's get that Mercedes and that Rolex watch and hang with the right folks." Whew! That ain't living. That's being a puppet.

The more famous you get, and the more successful, the more demands are made on your time. Do you find you have to protect yourself from those demands to live your own life and not live everyone else's life?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Naomi Judd: I had to finally add a word to my vocabulary, and that word was "no." Because when I was a kid, I made all A's. I kept my room clean. I colored within the lines. I so wanted to be loved, because I genuinely loved people, and I wanted them to reciprocate, and that's how I would get my acceptance sometimes. When we started really popping with the career -- the demands and the constant pulls on us -- I would sometimes go without sleep, just so I could be a good girl and do what everybody needed me to do. And then when my illness came along, I had no choice. It was a life and death situation, and I had to say, "No. My plate is full. Thank you."

And it was the first time, because I had it backwards. I thought this was a luxury.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. I thought that I was indulging myself if I would go off into the woods for a few days by myself. That was, like some women go to a spa or go to Saks on a buying spree. What I always craved was solitude, because I think silence is refreshment for our souls. It's also creativity's best friend, and I really needed to digest all of the miraculous things that were transpiring in our lives, the opportunities to travel and to really submerge into all these subcultures in America and see this crazy quilt that America is. It's important for us to sort of stop the car, take out the map, see if we're going in the right direction. We would just have days where I'd sit with Wynonna and Ashley and I'd say, "Okay. Tell me what's going on inside. I see what's going on on the outside. I want to listen." So there are all these good things, and I have to really temper this. There are all these good things that have come out of my illness, very, very valuable precious things. You just have to cut out this roaring confusion of modern society. It's deafening, and it's insane. Just because you have success, what the world calls success, doesn't mean that you're a prisoner of that. It simply means that you have more choices, and I'm so aware and grateful of that, to have options, because I didn't used to have very many.

What does the phrase "American Dream" mean to you?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Naomi Judd: Those are two really cool words, "American" and "dream," because I'm so stinking patriotic. I have a flag flying from my front porch at my house, and I really understand. Because I'm just a free spirit myself, I really, really get it about how lucky we all are to be living in this country. And the word "dream," it's like it's in my DNA or something. I'm a total dream chaser. Wynonna and I used to sing a song every night on stage called "Dream Chaser," because it was our anthem. We named our bus the Dream Chaser. We had it on the back of the bus, and people see us going down life's highways, and that's exactly what we were doing. We were just out there chasing our dreams. And when you say "American" and "dream," it almost has an exponential quality to it, because I'm living proof that if you live in America, you can do anything, because I was born in a small town, Ashland, Kentucky. Daddy had a gas station, and I come from the ranks, from a blue collar, hard-working family. I just decided that nobody and nothing was going to stop me from doing what I wanted to do, whether it was getting my butt off welfare and putting myself through college when I had sole responsibility for two little girls -- one of which was Hurricane Wynonna -- or was a battered woman and I decided, "Unh unh, I ain't going to do this no more." So it's one of those things where "You change your mind, you change your life," and I decided that we were going to go to Nashville, Tennessee, and get into country music.

[ Key to Success ] The American Dream

I didn't have anybody to help me or pat me on the head or write me a check or open a door for me or nothing until we got there and started putting the team together.

You mentioned in passing that you had been battered by a boyfriend at one time. More and more attention is being paid to that problem in our society. What gave you the strength to walk away from that and inspire other people to get away from those self-destructive relationships? So many people can't get away until it's too late.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Naomi Judd: I think what happens with these people who are battered, or who found themselves in really abusive situations, is that somehow they have not been taught to love themselves. They don't realize their self worth. They don't understand the power, the personal power that they have, and that they are ultimately the decision maker. There's a strange phenomenon that goes on with so many women -- and I don't think it's as prevalent perhaps today as it was in another generation -- of feeling that they don't have choices. You know, there are more animal shelters than there are shelters for abused women in America. The same little thing that there are more lawyers than there are doctors. Go figure. But so many of my girlfriends don't understand that they have personal power. They give it away. They let the man tell them who and what they are, and it breaks my heart.

I used to be very -- what's the word? "Subservient" is a good word. I always assumed that he knew better, but you just reach a point where you decide, "Okay, I was a victim once, but I ain't going to be a volunteer anymore."

Thank you so much. We really appreciate it.

Naomi Judd: Thank you! You've been really patient!

Naomi Judd Interview, Page: 1   2   3   4   5