Editor’s Note: Our friend, Ashley Judd, joined YouthAIDS as Global Ambassador in 2002, after seeing the effects of HIV/AIDS on communities and children in the United States and around the globe. With no cure in sight, and the realization that education is the only way to prevent the spread of this disease, Ashley uses voice and platform — on behalf of those without a voice — to promote YouthAIDS’s programs and to provide young adults with immediate solutions for fighting the global epidemic. Most recently, Ashley went to Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where she kept a daily personal journal detailing the heart-wrenching experience. Each week this summer, wOw shares one diary excerpt. The following journal entry was written during the second half of April 24th. Click here to read Ashley’s journal from the first part of April 24th.

Somehow it is still the 24th of April.

After the genocide memorials, lunch on a patio set in a tropical garden (I kept dropping out of conversations to use my field glasses to watch birds), the full immersion into PSI Rwanda, and the church visit, I crawled into bed. I have an event tonight, the United Nations Development Programme Gender Equality Conference dinner, and I wasn’t going to make it without some quiet time. I knew I didn’t have time to cry, to begin to process all I had seen; I didn’t have time to make a few reach-out phone calls or to get started writing, so I simply took a shower and lied down. And, frankly, I don’t know if I had energy for those things.

The excitement of my 40th birthday at Skibo, the forced layover in Brussels and whirlwind and emotional assault of the day; I was exhausted and a little worried I was starting a 14-day trip this tired. To my surprise, because I am an experienced “rester” but not necessarily a talented “napper,” I fell asleep for an hour and half. I slept with my pretty new sapphire earrings still in my ears, head perfectly straight on the pillow, ankles crossed. I did not flinch, apparently.

Click here to read Ashley’s Rwanda Diaries Part One.

Click here to read Ashley’s Rwanda Diaries Part Two.

I roused about 7:15, after Staci was scheduled to arrive for my briefing. I boiled the kettle and made some green tea and she arrived just in time for me to serve us both. Soon after, the great Zainab Salbi arrived, resplendent with her chic cropped hair, black silk shirtwaist dress and fabulous beaded necklace. Man, Mr. Armani would love her! Some women do so much with so little ….

Zainab sat next to Staci and I quietly snuggled into the sofa. I was feeling very vulnerable after my sleep, undefended and wide open. I enjoyed my delicate state as these two remarkable women put on an unselfconscious show of empowerment, talking with intimate knowledge of global poverty and armed conflict, how girls and women and the environment are the wreckage and the simple grassroots solutions that are the way out. "Dang," I thought, "you women are fine, and I want to be you when I grow up!" I did not worry about contributing save for more questions that would set them off on another round of fascinating stories, and I am so grateful today that I don’t feel like I had to show off or impress with my own experience; that is one of the many pleasures of having mentors, learning to listen, listening to learn.