Wynonna Judd is continuing to speak out about the loss of her mother, and duo partner, Naomi Judd. Naomi tragically ended her life on April 30, one day before The Judds  were to be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. Although Naomi battled mental illness for years, Wynonna acknowledges that she will likely never understand the depths of pain her mother was enduring.

“I can’t quite wrap my head around it and I don’t know that I ever will, that she left the way she did,” Wynonna reflects to People. “That’s how baffling and cunning mental illness is. You have to make peace with the fact that you don’t know. Sometimes there are no answers.”

It was Naomi’s tenacity throughout her life that also contributed to her ultimately deciding she no longer wanted to live.

“[She] was always so determined. No matter what happened to her,” Wynonna shares. “Being fired. Being forgotten. A single white female raising two babies by herself. On welfare and food stamps. She never gave up.”

“So think about that and apply it to every stinking part of life, including death,” she continues. “With the same determination she had to live, she was determined to die. It’s so hard to comprehend how someone can be so strong and yet so vulnerable.”

The Judds had plans to embark on their farewell The Final Tour., after Wynonna finished her run of dates as a solo artist. The 58-year-old knows that the time away from her and her sister, actress Ashley Judd, was difficult for Naomi.

“It was incredibly painful for [my mom] because her favorite place to be was on the road and to be with me and Ashley,” Wynonna concedes. “She was by herself a lot. And so we were disconnected. One of my regrets is that I was so busy. She often talked about how lonesome it is in that house without us.”

Wynonna is continuing The Final Tour without her mother, joined instead by a rotating list of guests that includes Faith Hill, Trisha Yearwood, Ashley McBryde, Little Big Town and Brandi Carlile.Wynonna has vowed to continue making music without her mother, as painful as it might be.

“I’ve accepted it as much as I possibly, humanly can,” says the singer. “Acceptance and then surrender, and what comes after is finding meaning.”

Wynonna also has a new determination to speak out about mental illness, and dispel the myths that surround it.

“There is not one person on this planet that is not susceptible to some form of depression,” she says. “The ones who need or want help, some will ask for it and some won’t.”

Now, Wynonna vows to focus on joy, even when that seems like the harder choice. But after losing her mother, the Kentucky native says that is the only way she knows to live.

“I will take every available opportunity to celebrate life because everything is a gift in this life,” Wynonna says. “Your breath, your heartbeat, the next day. Maybe her greatest legacy was in darkness, there is light.”

Find tour dates at TheJudds.com.

If you or someone you know is in crisis, help is available 24/7 from the National Suicide Prevention Line at 800-273-8255.