Ashley Judd reveals she fractured her leg in ‘freak accident’ while mourning her mom Naomi Judd’s death… over a year after she shattered her leg in the Congo: ‘Clumsiness is associated with grief’

 Ashley Judd fractured her leg in a ‘freak accident’ while mourning her mother Naomi Judd’s death.

The actress revealed the femoral condyle fracture happened over the summer and it healed in two months, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

The 54-year-old star, who shattered her leg last year in a harrowing 55 hour ordeal deep in the Congo jungle, spoke about her femoral condyle fracture during an appearance at an Open Mind lecture with Dr. Jonathan Flint.

She spoke to Dr. Flint via zoom for an hour, revealing that her injury ‘healed in two months, lickety-split.’

The femoral condyle is the ball shaped end of a person’s leg at the femur, which is the thigh bone; there are two condyles on each leg.

‘It was what it was. Clumsiness is associated with grief, and there were other people in our family, after mom died, who fell down stairs and had accidents, and that’s just what mine happened to look like,’ she explained.

‘It really allowed me to grieve. It really allowed me to stop what I was working on at that moment and to grieve.’

Naomi Judd died on April 30 at age 76 from a self-inflicted gun shot wound while at her home in Tennessee.

On how she processed her death, Ashley said: ‘The day that my beloved mother died by suicide, I had so many people to call. There were five women who were with me within moments of my sharing that tragic news with them, and they are my chosen sisters.’

‘I was just reflecting on those first days after her passing and how there was always someone with me at my house,’ she said.

She explained that her friends were her community, and they ‘held me physically and they held my home and they held my soul.’

In February 2021, Ashley revealed she had shattered her leg while on a trip to Congo, when a faulty head lamp made it hard for her to see during an excursion.

She said she then tripped over a tree that fell, causing her to break her leg, during an Instagram Live with Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times, via People.

During the live at the time, Ashley said that she was ‘in an ICU trauma unit in beautiful South Africa, which has taken me in from the Congo: a country I deeply love which is not, unfortunately, equipped to deal with massive catastrophic injuries like I had.’

Adding: ‘And the difference between a Congolese person and me is disaster insurance that allowed me 55 hours after my accident to get to an operating table in South Africa.’

The actress said many people from the Congo don’t have access to even something as simple as a pain killer let alone if they shattered their leg in four places and have nerve damage, stressing her privilege.

Ashley also shared a picture of a Bonobo on Instagram and described how the chimpanzees are ‘endangered’ with her and a team having a small research camp in the Congo.

The actress described how she ‘nearly lost her leg’ during the excursion, adding: ‘I am accustomed to being there. I am a woman of the wilderness, as you know.

‘Accidents do happen. I struck something in the dark and fell.’

 Ashley said after the accident, the next 55 hours were ‘harrowing’ as she ‘started with five hours of lying on the forest floor.’

She was with a colleague like that until she was able to be evacuated, the star explained.

‘With his leg under my badly misshapen leg, biting my stick. Howling like a wild animal,’ as she held up the stick on the Live, per the outlet.

At the end of the fifth hour, someone came to reset her bones while she was ‘going into shock’ and ‘passing out’ because of the pain, according to People.

Afterwards, she spent ‘an hour and a half in hammock, being carried out of the rainforest by my Congolese brothers, who were doing it barefoot, up and over hills, through the river’ in order to return to the camp.

The next step in the journey had Ashley on a motorcycle for six hours with someone holding her leg up and someone driving.

Ashley also said she recognized her ‘privilege’ in being able to pay someone to take her.

Then, she spent the night in a hut in Jolu and then being flown into the capital of Kinshasa for a day before getting to South Africa to the ICU, per People.

Of her whole ordeal, she said: ‘I’m in a lot of love. I’m in a lot of compassion and I’m in a lot of gratitude. I thank everyone for their thoughts and their prayers and their support,’ according to People.

In July 2021, Ashley gave fans an update on her leg, five months after her accident, revealing that her leg and foot ‘worked beautifully. as she continued to build up her stamina and strength.

She also said that her foot, which was paralyzed, began moving in four months, something which her doctors said wouldn’t happen until a year post accident.

Ashley thanked her surgeons as she revealed the surgery to repair her leg took eight hours, as well as thanking her physical therapist during her road to recovery.