Ashley Judd is walking again after shattering her leg in a devastating accident in the Congo nearly six months ago.
The actress and activist posted on Instagram a video of her hiking through the Swiss National Park in eastern Switzerland this weekend.
“Dear Friends, It is with reverence and quiet awe I offer this update,” she captioned a video from her hike on Instagram. “Today, five months and three weeks after the accident in the Congolese rainforest, I walked again, and in what fashion! I hiked in the #SwissNationalPark. Stepping in, I felt in my ease, my natural garment of self, at home in my spirit. My leg and foot, worked beautifully. I walked up hill on uneven surfaces for an hour confidently and came down carefully and easily. I rested in a meadow on God’s fecund earth for hours.”
The actress went onto say that the recovery was unexpected as doctors had projected her foot to even start moving only a year later.
“The video of my foot moving is unheard of,” Judd said. “We expected my foot — if ever — to *begin* to move in one year. In four months to the day, she went blew us all away. Now, after crying while trying to spell the ABCs with a paralysed foot…. well, you see!
My leg will never be the same. She is a new leg. And I love her. We are buddies. We have a come a long way and we have a fabulous life ahead.”
Some of Judd’s celebrity friends responded with congratulatory comments.
“Oh so happy to hear this good news... Sending you so much love and healing energy!” wrote actress Reese Witherspoon.
“So much love for you [three heart emojis],” posted ‘Captain Marvel’ actress Brie Larson.
Actress Mira Sorvino wrote, “I am in awe of your courage and your positive spirit!!! So happy for your healing in all ways Ashley!!!”
In February, Judd has shared dramatic images of her 55-hour ordeal after her fall in the jungles of Congo that resulted in a ‘catastrophic’ leg injury and landed her in an ICU in South Africa.
The 52-year-old actress’ harrowing tale was described in an accompanied Instagram post where Judd spoke of her painful ordeal of lying stranded for five hours on a rainforest floor, which she believed would have resulted in her death had it not been for the kindness of strangers.
She first shared the ordeal through an Instagram Live from the ICU, saying that a faulty headlamp resulted in her tripping over a fallen tree in the dark and breaking her leg in multiple places. She said at the time that she is “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 have had”.
“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,” Judd added, while speaking to New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof during the chat.
