Ashley Judd Has Coped with a Paralyzed Foot for Years after Near-Amputation – 3 Times We’d See Her ‘Warrior’ Scars

• In 2021 Ashley Judd went through a grueling 55-hour ordeal after breaking her leg in Africa.
• The actress has shared inspiring updates of her recovery that show her scars.

This week Ashley Judd uploaded a carousel of her walking in the Alps in Switzerland. This is a remarkable feat for most, but exceptional considering that two and a half years ago, she broke her leg in five places in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Her foot was paralyzed, and she faced possible amputations. One can still see the deep scars in a photo of her posing in front of a waterfall. She thanked the Congolese people who saved her after the accident and the medical staff that attended to her.

Due to her partner, Martin Surbeck‘s research in the DRC, the couple spends a few weeks two times a year in the country. On a trip at the beginning of 2021, Judd tripped over a fallen tree during a brisk morning walk in the forest and broke her right leg.

She chronicled the 55-hour ordeal of getting to safety in a February 16, 2021, post, thanking the Congolese people by name who aided her rescue, starting with Dieumerci, who stretched out his leg under her “grossly misshapen left leg to try to keep it still.”

In April of that year, she showed a close-up of her leg while exercising. “I remember when I began sleeping through the night. I remember when I began to have dreams again (both kinds). With the kind of injury I (& many others) have, we speak of degrees,” she wrote in part.

She praised her sister Wynonna Judd‘s “medical-grade massages” that “reminded” her brain that she still had a right foot. “I have a few of those Warrior scars,” a fan commented. “Looks like you are improving. It’s a process like no other.”

“I knew that you’d suffered a terrible injury, ” a person wrote,” but that must have been such a traumatic injury looking at those scars. Glad that you’ve survived and continue to be an inspiring soul.”

“What a [expletive] WARRIOR you are!!! Wear those scars with the pride of earning them with pain, fortitude, and courage. You only get scars, Miss Judd, if you [expletive] survive. Remember that!” a fan said.

Barely half a year after her accident, Ashley Judd posted a gallery from Fenway Park, where she watched a Boston Red Sox game. Though she did not reference the ordeal in her caption, one can see her exposed leg in the second slide of her August 31, 2021 post.

She is wearing a white and blue dress with a supportive sneaker on her right foot and a sandal on the other. There is a partial bandage on her leg as she walks into one restricted area with graffiti of the players’ home runs.

Paparazzi photographed the star at the airport in another situation of two shoes, this time with a croc on her injured foot in October of that year. She did not look shy as showing her “warrior scars” in a breezy sundress.

“How are you celebrating your blessings?” Ashley Judd asked in her post from the Alps on Saturday, August 12, 2023. She had walked up the mountain for the “sheer joy of it, confidently.”