Naomi, Reaching Out Anew : Pop music: Judd, who will speak in Garden Grove next week, tells her rags-to-riches story in the hopes of helping and inspiring others.

Naomi Judd, one of country music’s superstars, insists that celebrity hasn’t robbed her of a “normal” family life.

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Normal folks spend weekends with friends, right?

Well, Judd said in a recent phone interview from her 500-acre farm near Nashville, Tenn., “It just so happens that one of my best girlfriends is Reba McEntire,” who last weekend invited Judd over to celebrate McEntire’s 20th year in country music with a private show and party.

“Then,” Judd continued, “we went straight from her show to a restaurant in Nashville” to hook up with Naomi’s daughter Wynonna, “who had just flown in on her private plane from Las Vegas, where she opened for Elton John and Michael Bolton.”

And what of Ashley, Judd’s youngest child? The actress had just called from the set of the John Grisham movie “A Time to Kill” and was homeward bound to attend Wednesday’s Country Music Assn. Awards show with Mom, a presenter, and Sis, both former honorees.

OK, so it isn’t a typical family, Judd concedes. But little has been typical about her famous life, one that she outlined in a best-selling autobiography and that has kept her busy lately as, among other things, an inspirational speaker.

This weekend Judd had been scheduled to sign copies of her book, “Naomi & Wynonna: Love Can Build a Bridge” (written in 1993 with Bud Schaetzle), at CountryFest ’95 in Long Beach. The three-day event, however, was canceled on Thursday. She is still scheduled to speak Oct. 14 at the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove and during morning services on Oct. 14 and 15. Judd has been telling her story on the lecture circuit since shortly after retiring from the stage in 1991.

It’s a rags-to-riches tale about how she struggled through teen pregnancy (“I had Wynonna on high-school graduation night”), domestic abuse and hand-to-mouth poverty before achieving country-music superstardom with Wy.

As the Judds, the Grammy Award-winning duo sold more than 15 million albums worldwide in the eight years before chronic active hepatitis, a potentially life-threatening disease, was diagnosed and prompted Naomi Judd to retire.

Today, the disease remains in remission.

“I’m radiantly healthy and goofy as ever,” said Judd, 49, who encourages lecture audiences to “question everything in their lives” and remember they have choices, no matter how bad things get.

That’s something that she says she realized as a single mother living on and off welfare in Los Angeles in her early 20s.

“I had no job skills--I had never worked--I was divorced with two babies, and I had no wheels,” she recalled. “I had minimum-wage jobs--patted on the butt and paid in pennies--and I fell into a series of bad relationships because I was so lonely and felt so anonymous and didn’t know a soul. I was a battered woman; I had gotten myself in a real bad predicament.

“But one day I was looking in the mirror over my sink at my black eye and fat lip, and it dawned on me that if this jerk would do it it me, what was to stop him from doing it to Wynonna or Ashley?

“I realized that even though I felt completely trapped and out of control with these circumstances of grim reality, I still had control over my choices; I was still in the driver’s seat as far as choosing my reactions, and no matter what was trapping me, if I had my mind, I could get out.”

Judd made the leap, returning to Kentucky. She put herself through college--while Wynonna learned to play guitar--and earned a nursing degree.

“When I’m speaking,” she said, “I remind women that the single fastest growing group of college students today is women over 35.”

She also speaks about how her steadfast belief in God has helped her cope with her hepatitis and stay well, she said.

As a nurse, the news that traditional medicine couldn’t provide a cure (hepatitis is a virus) hit especially hard, she said. “So I really had to completely understand that God is a supernatural being, which of course means that all things are possible. . . . I’m living proof that it pays to believe in miracles.”

An ongoing exploration of the “spirit-mind-body phenomenon,” which has led her to meet such leaders in the field of alternative medicine as Deepak Chopra, has also helped. She saw a therapist to deal with “hideous” panic attacks she suffered after retirement, Judd added.

“I went from being on stage every night and communicating with thousands and thousands of human beings and being with Wynonna every day and night” to “a very serious seclusion” that was necessary to finish her autobiography on time.

“The therapist looked at me and said, ‘I’ve been doing this for 42 years and had people who were told they were terminal, or fired or had to quit a job they were completely immersed in, or torn from the bosom of their family. But I’ve never had one individual to whom all this was happening at once.’ ”

Judd says she “desperately” misses performing but has never discussed reuniting with Wynonna, who plans to release her third solo album in February. Splitting up was like “open-heart surgery,” she said, and “it’s just such an exquisitely painful, emotionally charged, immensely complicated issue.”

What about a solo career? Health is “not really” an issue, Judd said. But she’s always been a harmony singer, the role she played in the Judds duo, and can’t see herself doing anything else.

“Harmony is my whole thing in life,” she said. “I was talking to a friend, walking in the woods at my meditation place, and I told her, ‘This is the only place I sing, deep in the woods when I’m completely alone.’ ”

Meanwhile, life has been good, said Judd, who is writing a song with Kevin Savigar, Rod Stewart’s keyboardist, for Wynonna’s next album, enjoying being a grandmother to Wynonna’s 9-month-old, Elijah, and planning to open a restaurant in Nashville.

“I’m going where my own questions lead me,” she said. “When I’m out there speaking, I’m a big sponge.”

* Naomi Judd will speak Oct. 14 at 1:30 p.m. and Oct. 15 at the 9:30 and 11 a.m. services at Crystal Cathedral, 12141 Lewis St., Garden Grove. (714) 971-4000.