Jewel shares pieces of advice
As debut album marks 25 years, singer-songwriter details her ‘emotional mindfulness toolkit’
Jewel, the singer-songwriter, has four pieces of advice when dealing with anxiety: “One is turn off the news,” she said. “Two is watch what the environment and the mood that is in your house. Three is start a gratitude practice. I’d say four is learn to meditate.”
Jewel, 46, who gained fame at age 20 with her first studio album, “Pieces of You,” in 1995, began practicing mindfulness — a form of meditation that includes being aware of your feelings and thoughts without judgment — as a teen. Since then she has developed a practice that includes meditating for up to an hour every morning.
“Meditation is like building a muscle, going to the gym and doing a bicep curl,” she said. “But if you don’t use that muscle during your day, it won’t change your life.”
She’s in the mountains of Colorado with her son, Kase Townes, 8, and is deeply concerned by the effects of the pandemic, social unrest and mounting unemployment on society: “I do think there’s the potential to have a greater loss of life from the mental health fallout, possibly even than from the virus, which would be a tremendous tragedy,” she said.
She has a new single, “Grateful,” and on Nov. 20, to commemorate the 25th anniversary of “Pieces of You,” the album will be reissued with a demo version of her hit single “You Were Meant for Me.” She’ll also hold a virtual concert, performing the record in its entirety.
A ‘chaotic’ upbringing
Born Jewel Kilcher, she grew up in Homer, Alaska, on an 300-acre ranch miles from the nearest town and without indoor plumbing. Her parents had a dinner show for tourists at a local hotel, and at 5, Jewel began singing with them. Three years later, she began singing at bars throughout Anchorage with her father.
She remembers her upbringing as “chaotic.” Her parents divorced; her father, a Vietnam veteran who developed PTSD, was then an active alcoholic. “My dad was very abused as a child, and he repeated some of those behaviors,” Jewel said, adding that they have a great relationship now. “Hurt people hurt people. We want to villainize it, but it’s always somebody hurt that’s hurting someone.”
Jewel described leaving home at 15 and moving into a little cabin in Homer. At 16, she earned a partial scholarship to Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan, where she studied classical vocal training and began writing songs.
At 18, after refusing to sleep with her boss at the computer warehouse where she was working, she said, she was fired and lived in her car, unable to pay rent. “I had men from a very young age put dimes in my hand and close my little fingers around them saying,
‘Call me when you’re 16,’ ” she said.
She started having panic attacks and kidney problems. “I almost died in an emergency room parking lot because they wouldn’t see me because I didn’t have insurance,” she said. She also had begun shoplifting as a form of self-love. To break the habit, she decided to develop a new one.
“Every time I wanted to steal, I just made myself write,” she said. “And I ended up becoming very prolific.” The experience
inspired her ballad “Hands” in 1998.
From there, she was able to find ground again, becoming curious about the exercises she could create for herself. “Could I get addicted to good things?” she said she wondered.
Finding mentors
Presented with a record deal at the end of 1993, Jewel promised herself she would prioritize her health. “The reason you see so much burnout in my field is because it’s not a healthy lifestyle, and nobody’s very
concerned about your mental health,” she said.
She was offered a $1 million “signing bonus” by almost every major label, she said. She turned it down because she feared being dropped if she didn’t sell enough records. “That ended up saving my career for a long time, for many years, because it was a failure for many years,” she said of “Pieces of You.”
In May 1995, Jewel opened a set for Bob Dylan in San Diego. She made a second album that was never released. While she was in the studio, Dylan’s team reached out to get Jewel to open for him on tour. She joined him in
April 1996 and would later find out that her yodeling caught his attention.
“He mentored me, he went over my lyrics with me, gave books to read and music to listen to, and it just came at that exact right time when nobody believed in me,” she said. After touring with Dylan, Neil Young took Jewel under his wing too. Nearly two years later, “Pieces of You” started to gain momentum.
“They both just drilled into my head that if you’re an artist, you better suck it up. You don’t have to cater to radio, you don’t have to cater to anything but what you believe is in your heart, and you better fight for it, and it really just invigorated me,” Jewel said.
Jewel, the activist
Nearly 20 years ago, Jewel began the Inspiring Children Foundation, a nonprofit group to help youth development in underserved communities. In 2019, she produced a documentary, “The Mindfulness Movement,” with Deepak Chopra.
Recently, the foundation has livestreamed conversations with mentors, thought leaders and celebrities who are passionate about mental health. “The only thing I ever used my celebrity for was being able to get to sort of superstar experts,” she said.
Alongside Dr. Judson Brewer, a neuroscientist, Jewel has created a curriculum for her youth foundation.
“We work with kids that have suicidal ideation and extreme anxiety and depression that come from very, very traumatic backgrounds,” she said. “They have no access to therapists, no money for therapists. And so we give them this emotional mindfulness toolkit that worked on me.”
To reach a larger audience, Jewel and Brewer made the program available for free on a separate website that explores meditation and what Jewel calls “mindfulness in motion” or “doing exercises that are practicable.” The website outlines a series of exercises and worksheets focused on retraining your brain, forgiveness, gratitude and more. Users can also discuss the exercise topics and their progress in a community forum.
“It’s important that people understand there’s a lot that you can do yourself to feel better,” Jewel said.