Jewel, who was once homeless and suffering from debilitating mental health issues, has since turned her life around and become a successful singer and songwriter.
The Foolish Game singer shared some of the trauma from her upbringing, including when her mother left her family when she was eight years old, while chatting on her podcast No Magic Pill.
Once back home, her father became “physically abusive,” and that’s when Jewell’s “whole world really turned upside down.”
“I made a promise at a young age that I wouldn’t do drugs or drink,” she said. “Again, I think it’s because I had a very front row seat to see what it would do. It didn’t look glamorous, you know, it didn’t look sexy.”
“And I knew that deep down inside of me, I was mortally afraid of it.”
By the age of 15, Jewell was living on her own and a few years later moved to San Diego to care for her sick mother. By the time she decided to live in her car while her mother went back to Alaska, her paycheck was decreasing and her bills were mounting.
At first, Jewell tried to be optimistic about the situation, but her mental health began to suffer.
“My panic attacks were getting worse. My agoraphobia was getting worse,” she said. “We didn’t have food. We didn’t have water. … We didn’t have anything. We didn’t have gas for our cars.”
Jewell recalled her lowest point when she started shoplifting.
“I started stealing food and stealing herbs and other things to try it out…but my kidneys were failing,” she said. “Then I started stealing things that weren’t food or things I didn’t need.”
Host Blake Mycoskie noted that in the singer’s memoir, Never Broken: Songs Are Only Half the Story, she said she looked at herself dressed up in the mirror and realized that she stole because she was afraid she would never be good enough.
“I think stealing really became an addiction for me,” she said. “It was compulsive. I couldn’t control it.”
As she stood in the changing room, trying to shove the stolen dress into her pants, Jewell had a difficult epiphany.
“When I looked at myself in the mirror…I was a statistic,” she said. “I’m a homeless kid who shoplifts, and if I keep going, I’m going to go to jail or die.”
The musician leans on a memorable quote: “Happiness doesn’t depend on who you are or what you have. It depends on what you think.”
From there, Jewel felt empowered to change her thoughts and change her methods in order to fully heal from her past. The unconventional step she took was to write down everything she did with her hands over a two-week period.
“I haven’t had a panic attack in two weeks,” she realized. “What stuck with me was fundamentally being in the moment. I was journaling about my hands all day long…I was literally watching my hands open the door. I was watching to see if I was shaking hands or anything like that.
“I watched my hands steal. I was so fundamentally present that I forgot to worry about a future that hadn’t happened yet. It was so liberating.”
She added, “I realized that fear is a thief and robs you of the only chance to change your life.”
