(soft music) - [Announcer] "A Word on Words" a program delving into the world of books and their authors.

This week Naomi Judd talks about "Love Can Build A Bridge."

Your host for "A Word on Words" Mr. John Seigenthaler, chairman of the Freedom Forum First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University.

- Hello, I'm John Seigenthaler.

Welcome once again to "A Word on Words."

It is a real treat to have as our guest for this program, Naomi Judd, welcome to "A Word on Words."

- You know, I always used to tell Wynonna and Ashley that words are the clothes that our thoughts wear.

And I have to point out to the audience.

I don't know if they can see, but not only are you articulate with your vocabulary, but you're even well-dressed.

He has books on his tie.

- Well, I mean, you're the first guest that has noticed, and I will tell you my wife, Dolores, who thinks that you have to keep these old houses painted, bought this tie and one that's blue very much like it, but I thank you for the compliment and for the notice.

I mean, I feel as if I'm sitting here in sartorial splendor, not matching yours by any means now.

- See, I got him discombobulated right off the bat.

I love it.

- That's a very disarming way to begin a program.

Well, it's so good to have you here.

- [Naomi] I just love to stir it up.

You know, just get right in there and stir it up.

- I'll say this, you've written a book that really stirs it up.

I mean, I found out so much about you, and about Wynonna that I had never known, but I found out mostly about you.

And I found out among other things that the Judd, who is the mother, who is most often seen in front of the cameras singing words has a real way with words.

- Wow, that's very kind.

- Well, it's not only kind.

I think people who read this book are gonna be in a real sense surprised that Naomi Judd is somebody who first of all, wanted to have a major role in writing her own book, did not want the book written for her, which says something thing about your intellectual interests and commitment.

And, secondly, I think that they're gonna be surprised to find the candor with which you speak about the good times and bad times in your lives.

And they're particularly gonna be admiring, I think of those bad times.

I'm interested because this program does delve into how writers write.

What finally led you to tell this story in this way?

- Well, the only way I know how to do anything, John, is just to be straight.

Whether you and I are talking, just sitting here together, or whether I'm on stage singing, it's the only currency that I have.

I've never read a book on how to write a book, and I always seem to be starting over.

I always seem to be in a position of having to reinvent myself.

And I remember sitting down with this big legal pad, and a sharpened pencil realizing I had to write a book, and I was overwhelmed with the notion.

And I just ran out into my woods.

I live on a farm about 45 minutes south of Nashville, spent the day in the woods, and just really went into meditation and prayer about how in the world I was going to do the process, tell people about the stupid things I've done, all the mistakes, how much of my family's skeletons was I gonna pull out of the closet?

And the message that I got was that the life of the Judds has a voice of its own, alongside of the music itself.

What Wynonna and Ashley and I are as women, as human beings, as people has a voice of its own.

And my job was simply to sit perfectly still for as long as it took and record that.

- You drop in lines along the way of telling the story that are gonna stop many readers.

The first one that really jumped off the page at me, and made me go back and read a couple of other things you've written, it was the one that says, goes something like this.

Enlightenment that can be described is not enlightenment.

I said, I can't wait to get her on "A Word on Words" because I wanna ask where it came from.

- You don't expect a little country girl.

- [John] What does it mean to her?

No, I mean, nobody in Ashland, Kentucky ever said anything like that.

- That's true.

- [Announcer] And if you said it in Hollywood, California, you'd get stoned, I mean, except in some circles, maybe in the library in Ashland, but I mean I'm fascinated by your weight with words.

I mean, it's not just that it's out of character.

I mean, authors quite frequently run against the grain of perception and more and more, if you look at people who are celebrities, and who are admired, you find that there is so much more there than just what you see, but what I've heard and read, and seen of the Judds, there on the stage in front of the camera, through a whole ordeal of early success.

And I think that sort of success for the two of you given what had gone before must have been an ordeal, through the ordeal of your illness.

None of that prepared me for either candor, or the level of writing that I got.

I mean, this is a thoughtful, well-thought-out, well-written book, and that's just not a compliment.

It's a comment which hopes to spark a response.

- Well, the phrase enlightenment that can be described, isn't really enlightenment, is actually an old Zen adage.

That's not an original thought of mine.

I think perhaps.

- Well, you say in the book it's a Zen adage.

- [Naomi] Yeah.

- Yeah.

- I think perhaps what I'm saying is that words fail us.

Words sometimes fall very short of trying to express an emotion, or an experience that was so overwhelming in its portent.

So enlightenment that can be described isn't really enlightenment is taking down so many layers.

I remember saying on stage one time when I was introducing a song I had written, and this song had very deep, profound meaning to me, I simply blurted out that music, for instance, it allows us to express emotions that words can't even begin to define.

And where I was personally, emotionally in the book at that stage that I made this phrase, I had realized that writing this book had become a voyage of self-discovery on a journey to wholeness for myself, so, there was no way that I could express to the reader.

For one thing there was no way I could ascertain their particular level of understanding.

I've been doing research in the mind-body field for four years.

- [John] I know that.

- I read myself.

I feel very fortunate to have had the accessibility to so many subcultures in America through my various travels for the last decade.

And I simply was saying that I have learned so much about myself in the process of becoming a detective in my own life, and putting together this amazing emotional jigsaw puzzle of writing my life story.

I sort of pulled back the curtain, and was allowed to see the little girl who grew up to be me.

I saw the bizarre adventurous that I was for all those gypsy years.

I realized how that when I was 37, and got into country music, these dear fans, these wonderful folks out there, validated me and allowed me to feel some self-worth, some confidence that sort of was a trajectory to launch me on the next phase, which was to really delve into my own spirituality, claim my healing, do research in the mind-body connection, explore psychology, and put it all together to become a whole package.

- Now, do you think writing this book, you do think writing this book, contributed in a very real way to the healing, and the wholeness that you now feel, at least you partially discovered?

- Absolutely, there's no question about it.

I have the ability, as Wynonna and Ashley tell me, to make lemonade from lemons.

- Right, that's one of the things they say, that's right.

- And, you know, when I was given a grim prognosis from my liver disease, I had thanked God.

And I think it really comes from having unconditional love as a child.

I think it comes from being raised and nurtured in a small town, in a community where I felt loved, and was told I was special.

So I was sort of sent out in the world as a little unit, you know, thinking, well, I can do this, I can do that.

When I was given my prognosis, I knew that there's another old saying that says when the body weeps for that which is lost the spirit rejoices for that which it is to gain.

And I just had a sense that in the middle of this grim reality, I was going to go where my questions led me, and that was going to lead me on yet another discovery.

I just had this insatiable curiosity about life, John, I knew.

- Enlightenment that can be described isn't enlightenment.

- [Naomi] Right.

- Well, let's talk a little bit about the title.

Some people might say, well, it's a cliche, love can build a bridge.

Seems to me that if it says what it means, it means if it's a chasm or a torrent to be passed over, and that it's more than a cliche.

It's really a secret.

There's a secret message there that goes beyond a title for a country music song.

Talk a little bit about it.

- Which also is the very last song, Wynonna and I ever sang together, like, why is my life so dramatic?

- That's right, yes.

- The title "Love Can Build A Bridge" talks about how in life we're always trying to get from A to B.

There are always chasms.

There are always gaps, you know?

- Right.

- For instance, right now I'm working with the gap between the spiritual community, and the scientific community.

And trying to talk about the mind-body connection.

I try to bridge the gap between the average person, and you're not average, by the way.

- Thanks, I mean, I thought I was just, I thought I was nice, good old boy.

- He's not average, folks.

- I do love country music I'll tell you that.

- I'm trying to bridge the gap between the average person on the street who doesn't understand maybe the medical jargon, and the scientific researcher about how the mind affects the body.

Wynonna and I were trying to bridge a gap once in a very tumultuous mother-daughter relationship.

I was trying to bridge a gap between poverty, and some measure of financial security or safety.

And I think that's what life is all about.

Life really involves only about four basic plots, you know, birth and children, and your job, and death, and stuff.

So I have figured out that love has this transformational power, it absolutely does, whether it's in trying to surmount hard empirical data, tests and prognosis and medical results, whether you're trying to do a small piece of personal work, or some impossible dream like trying to become a country music artist in a one in a million shot.

Love has this, it's no question about it.

It is the greatest healer of all.

It's greater than any wise books we can read, or any erudite thing that we could possibly say.

- I guess it would be too much a cliche to say you were trying to bridge the "River of Time," so I won't say that.

- That's a little inside joke, folks, it's a song I wrote.

- But I will say that the first time, I think love is mentioned in the book.

It's a word that comes out of your father's mouth.

And he says, do you love him, and you say, no.

- [Naomi] Wow, I never thought of that.

- No, uh, no, uh, yes.

And at that time you were pregnant and unmarried.

And when you say yes, he says, you'll have to marry him.

- That's what you did in 1963 in small town America.

- That's what you did in 1963 in small town America.

It's what some people still do in big town, and small town America, but it was the fashion there.

Now what about that ambivalence?

I mean, I thought you were telling us something about yourself.

I thought you were saying this.

What we later find out is that this is a marriage that should never have happened.

And that it was the thing to do, but it was also the thing to say yes, and that the wrong word popped out first, but it was really the right word.

- So many women, and this is one of the most powerful lessons that I've had to learn in my life.

So many women were raised to be demure, to follow a standard, to sort of keep it within the fence posts, and to live at a role that they thought was expected of them.

And when I got out to Hollyweird in my 20s, and found myself in a relationship with a man who turned out to be an abuser, physically abused me, psychologically tormented me.

That's when I had to do that little quantum leap of faith, and step out and realize that I had worth and dignity.

And I had to empower myself, and realize I'm a child of the most high God.

And that this isn't what he wants for me.

And I have talked to so many women.

I really cherish my female friends, by the way.

They're very important to me, and I've learned a lot.

- [John] And they've caught in the same trap?

- Absolutely.

- That you were caught in by James Dean Jr. - [Naomi] Yes.

- Yeah.

- My friend Oprah Winfrey once said that the thing that disturbs her most is that women allow men to run their lives, and they don't acknowledge their own, their own personal power.

- You know, I might just talk about that opening mention of love, because it did produce a love child.

- [Naomi] I never thought of it that way, a love child.

- Christina Claire.

- [Naomi] Yes.

- Who later because of "Route 66" became known as Wynonna.

You know, I'm sure that the glitz, and the celebrity that's come to the two of you has what is taken for granted from many of us, considering where you came from, is never taken for granted by you, and that's another message I get from that book.

- Not for nanosecond.

- Yeah, because I didn't know anything about those gypsy years, that period.

I mean, you tell about Michael, your husband, Wynonna's father introducing you to pot, and you write with what pain it is to acknowledge that you fell into that trap for a while.

And when I said there is an awful lot of candor there, but it's not written in any sense for shock appeal.

It reads almost as if it's a purgative.

I'm telling this because I want to get it out.

And if I hold it in, I'm being dishonest, not just with the reader, but with myself.

And you read some books by some celebrities who sort of flaunt relationships, and the thing that makes this book real, I think, is that it's not told in any given situation to flaunt it.

It's not downplayed, it's just there.

Here's what I am.

And here's how I came to be what I am.

Now that's how I read it.

I mean, there's that point where you talk about Wynonna's fascination with a guitar, and you say she wouldn't pay any attention to anything else.

- She had the attention span of a gnat if I remember right.

- Right, and as a mother who wanted her child to do well in school led a confrontation.

Now I know that you go in programs where they make an awful lot about the confrontation between you and Wynonna, but that's not the way it's told in the story.

And if I start throwing questions at you about shock factors in your life, I'm telling our viewers they're gonna miss an awful lot of this book that is written with a different purpose.

I mean, this book is written to tell about a life that is unbelievable.

I mean, if I were you I'd have written a fiction book, and nobody would've believed it.

- They say that my life story is really stranger than anything any Hollywood screenwriter could dream up.

And don't you find, I mean, you're such a reader yourself, you know that real life is stranger than publicity.

- Well, you do know it.

I mean, you know it.

40 odd years in journalism taught me that.

And, you know, everyone complains now about all the violence on television.

And I worry about violence on television, but I worry a heck of a lot more about violence on the streets, violence in the home.

- [Naomi] Absolutely.

- Which is what you experienced.

How were you able you say in there I decided finally that I was tired of being a handmaiden for powerful men.

I think that's a quote.

- Patted on the butt, and paid in pennies.

That's the rest of the sentence.

- [John] That's exactly, patted on the butt and paid in pennies.

Was it just Wynonna saying why don't you just come home that brought you back?

- I have a very bizarre biological chronological clock.

I seem to have done everything completely out of rhythm and rhyme to other people.

Married at 17 before my senior year of high school.

I was 37 before we ever got into country music, put myself through college in my 30s, got myself off welfare, but I just live fully in the moment.

I practice what's called mindfulness.

For instance, noticing your tie, you know.

Even though we're in a TV studio, and there's a TV camera over here, I have learned, and I think I've always been this way, John, I just have this very vivid imagination.

And I really experience all five senses.

When you live fully in the moment and you're cognizant, and you're really present with yourself, and your immediate surroundings, you get tantalized by the possibility of adventure.

And I'm always saying to myself, what if?

What if I go over and speak to this person?

What if I take this job?

What if we get in the U-Haul-It and move to Texas, and check out country music in Texas, you know?

What if I go to Northern California?

- Right, well, that's right.

- Put myself in college up there and get into medicine.

That's just the way I live my life.

I don't know what I'm gonna do next, I really don't.

Wynonna and Ashley say that I'm actually a backwards pioneer.

I seem to be going back, and rediscovering things all the time.

- It's interesting to me that every time I've heard about you, until I looked at that book, it's been the Judds.

I mean, it's been Naomi and Wynonna.

- [Naomi] And Ashley.

- And every time you've mentioned the Judds on this program, it has been Wynonna, Ashley, and me.

And let's talk a little bit about Ashley.

- I'd be glad to.

I just came from New York where I helped her.

She's got an apartment down in the Village, and I ran out like a proud mom.

I'm getting her waste basket, and shower curtain, and scrubbing her floors, and everything, getting her settled in and building a nest because she's going to be a star on Broadway.

She just took William Inge's play lead for "Picnic."

And I was telling you off mic that I'm so proud of Ashley, 'cause she has so much integrity.

I've raised both the girls to believe in personal excellence, which is to be differentiated from success.

I think success is the report card that society puts on us.

What kind of car do you drive?

What's your job?

Who do you hang with?

But Wynonna and Ashley believe that a commitment to personal excellence is soul satisfying, that that's what's real, and meaningful in life.

So she turned down this huge budget, big studio picture to do a Broadway play.

- [John] To do "Picnic."

- Mm-hmm, today, she's getting her hair chopped off, and dyed blonde, I can't wait to see that.

- Well, so much of your professional life was enmeshed with Wynonna's professional career.

- And next week I'm gonna go out and do "Sisters" with Ashley in Los Angeles.

- Ah, that is terrific.

- She's had for the last two years, a feature in an NBC hit series called "Sisters" on Saturday nights.

And they've been trying to get me for a couple years now.

- [John] That's wonderful.

- To do some acting with Ashley.

And I really haven't wanted to mess with that.

Ashley is very autonomous.

She wanted to make it on her own.

In fact, she didn't want anyone to actually know that she was one of those Judds because she wanted to make it on her own merit.

- [John] Good for her.

- So it's gonna be her final episode, 'cause she's asked to be released from her TV contract so she can concentrate on film work, but I couldn't resist.

I'm gonna go out and be in the last episode with her.

- That's marvelous.

There is a scene in the book where it's a very touching scene, and it's told with great naturalness, and, therefore, great pathos, in which you're telling Wynonna, it's not the Judds anymore, it's Wynonna.

The breakup has come because illness has forced it.

You can't go on.

Fortunately, Larry Strickland has come along, and it's not all bad news by any means, but it's bad news.

I mean, I don't want to try to pull the mask off Naomi Judd, but I would think that that moment, and it reads this way, was one in which mother and daughter who had had some problems as every, I mean, they afflict every family, but it really all was right there in that moment.

All the bad times, all the good times, all the horror of what you were going through, and the uncertainty of what she was going through just filled in that one moment when you reached out, and take her face in your hands and speak to her.

I'm not trying to say, how do you feel now that death has occurred, but I am interested in that moment.

- Very few people, I think, John, will ever have something like that happen to them.

I felt as if I was being unplugged from life support because the stage was really, the career was actually a metaphor for life itself with me.

It was as if all the garbage that I had survived in my life, as I said, we didn't get into the career 'til I was 37 years old.

Being on welfare, feeling like I was just a face in the crowd, completely anonymous, feeling so alone, so much of my life, friendless at times, struggling to keep a jar of peanut butter on the table for my children, being beaten by a man that I loved.

Just at one time my mother didn't speak to me for almost seven years, which was excruciating to me.

All the stuff that I've been through, let alone the life threatening disease.

And in that moment I was afraid I was gonna collapse into a sobbing heap on the stage as we were getting ready to sing our last song together.

I just felt like life is horribly unfair sometimes, but change really is the true nature of this world.

And we have to sort of free-fall into that.

And I'd just been hanging on by my fingernails, the whole concert until that last song, but when I looked into Wynonna's face, and realized that she was losing it.

She had no voice.

And this last song "Love Can Build A Bridge" required the highest range vocal challenge of any of our songs.

The old maternal instinct once again saved my butt because it was like flipping a switch inside my head.

When I saw my child drowning, when she was in trouble, I completely came out of myself, and my whole motivation, my whole, everything was just to bolster her.

So I wrapped my arm around her, and I made eye contact with her.

I just locked into her and I said, the deepest source of your identity, it's not being my daughter.

It's not being my child.

It's not being a Judd.

The deepest source of your identity is the Lord.

And in that moment, the underpinning strains of "Love Can Build A Bridge" our church choir was behind us, and I just felt like the stage was being levitated.

It was really an ethereal transcendent moment.

It was a sacred moment.

Nothing will ever outshine its brilliance.

(soft music) - [Announcer] Naomi Judd, author of "Love Can Build A Bridge" has been our guest on "A Word on Words."

Your host has been John Seigenthaler, chairman of the Freedom Forum First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University.

This program was produced in the studios of WDCN Nashville.

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