Wynonna Judd says her estranged daughter, Grace Pauline Kelley, is “not sober.”
“I realize that she has to make the choice herself. I’ve done everything I can do,” the singer said in a new podcast appearance on The Shawn Ryan Show.
Her statement comes just over a year after Kelley told The Daily Progress that she’d gotten sober, a decision that she said stemmed from her Oct. 2024 arrest for stealing a church van. Kelley said she’d gotten baptized in and was an active member at that church.
In her interview with The Shawn Ryan Show, Judd didn’t speak to that interview Kelley gave the Progress. She didn’t say that her daughter had gotten sober and relapsed, nor did she say that her daughter had never gotten sober at all.
Instead, Judd described a years-long battle with her daughter’s addiction, and how she finally came to the conclusion to step away, as she realized that her financial support might ultimately be hurting Kelley’s chances of achieving lasting sobriety.
What Did Wynonna Judd Say About Her Daughter Grace’s Addiction Battle?
Right now, she says, all she can do is wait for “my daughter to return from a nightmarish addiction to meth.”
Grace Pauline Kelley, 30, is one of two children Judd shares with her ex-husband Arch Kelley. Grace’s legal problems date back to 2015, when she was arrested in Nashville and charged with manufacturing meth.
Since then, she’s been in and out of jails and facilities and faced more charges over drug-related offenses, thefts and parole violations.
Read More: Wynonna Judd Says Her Daughter’s Addiction, Estrangement is ‘Hell On Earth’ [EXCLUSIVE]
Judd says that her daughter’s decade-plus-long battle with addiction has been grueling.
“I’ve sent her to wilderness programs, schools, boarding schools where it’s all about recovery. We all went to AA meetings, pre-teen meetings,” she explains. “And I’ve walked the walk with her for so long that I realized I’m not able to control her or control the disease.”
“All I have control of is myself. I finally get it,” she adds. “It took my hundreds of thousands of dollars later. I finally get it, but I could have been the reason she died. And I just can’t live with that.”
Why Did Wynonna Judd Cut Off Her Daughter Grace Amid Addiction Battle?
Judd says that she cut Kelley off financially about a year and a half ago, and that’s about where their relationship ended.
“She had been incarcerated on and off for so long that it got to the point…where I realized that I’m actually helping her get drugs by buying her another new car,” the singer says. “I know it sounds a little petty, ’cause it’s a car. But it helped me to realize that she hasn’t had a job since she was 17.”
“And I realize, ‘Oh my God, it’s possible that I could be part of the reason she dies,'” she adds. “I’m loving her to death. Literally.”
Why is Wynonna Judd’s Estranged Daughter “Really Mad” At Her?
“Grace is really mad at me right now,” Judd admits. “Because I had a career, and I was busy, and she didn’t get enough of me at the beginning.”
“I did the best I could. I’ve made a lot of mistakes,” she continues. “And she’s really mad at me for stepping in with her child.”
Judd and her husband, Cactus Moser, are raising Kelley’s 4-year-old daughter Kaliyah, who has Type 1 diabetes. “There’s no way [Kelley] could have taken care of her,” Judd says.
“My journey is to raise this baby to be the healthiest and break the cycle,” the singer continues.
In the interview Kelley gave The Daily Progress last year, she also said that her stepfather, Judd’s ex-husband D.R. Roach, sexually abused her when she was 10 years old. She also said that Judd helped cover it up.
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Judd and Roach were married from 2003 to 2007. He was arrested in March 2007 and charged with three counts of aggravated sexual battery against a child under the age of 13. Judd filed for divorce days later.
Roach was convicted of attempted aggravated sexual battery against a minor. His victim was never publicly identified at trial.
Kelley says that Judd knew about the abuse before it was made public, and wanted to address the situation through family counseling instead of separation.
Read More: Wynonna Judds’ The Hard Truth Album, Explained
“When they found out in counseling what he had done to me, they’re like, ‘Wait a minute. We’re going to report this to law enforcement,'” she told The Daily Progress. “When he was arrested and it came out in the news, that’s when she divorced him.”
“So is my mom rich? Yeah, she’s so rich that she was able to sweep me under the rug and abuse me and then cover it all up,” Kelley says at one point in the interview. “I don’t want to talk bad about my mom, but we’ll just say she’s a good performer. She was never a mother.”
Country Stars Whose Family Feuds Turned Into Lawsuits
Family first is one of the core values in country music, but that doesn’t mean that country stars’ family relationships are all sweetness and light. Several country stars have been involved in family feuds that turned so nasty that they ended up in lawsuits.
Gallery Credit: Sterling Whitaker
