From a diamond in the rough to a chart-topping pop-rock icon, Jewel is living proof of the power of an indomitable spirit to overcome tragedy.
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00:00From a diamond in the rough to a chart-topping pop rock icon,
00:04Jewel is living proof of the power of an indomitable spirit to overcome tragedy.
00:10Jewel Kilcher was only eight years old when her mother, Linedra Carroll, divorced her father,
00:14Attila Atts Kilcher, leaving him to raise the children on his own. But the young daughter
00:19could not take being apart from her mom, as she explained in her memoir.
00:23Never broken, songs are only half the story, she wrote.
00:26My heart ached for her so, and in years to come I made desperate attempts to see her.
00:31Even if she had to take a huge risk and hitchhike to get there as a kid, Jewel did whatever she
00:36could to reach her mom, only to find that she couldn't care less. Instead of spending time
00:41with her daughter, Carroll tricked Jewel into staring at a lightbulb for hours and making her
00:45believe she had the power to alter it, just to keep the child preoccupied. She was too young
00:50at the time to understand what was happening, but the situation became much clearer as an adult when
00:55her father confessed the reason why Carroll abandoned the family all those years ago.
00:59Jewel explained,
01:01She had told him that she needed a break from being a mom and that she wanted to explore her
01:04life without us. So when Jewel made several trips to see her, the sad truth was that Carroll,
01:10for the most part, didn't want her there.
01:13Atts Kilcher certainly stepped up to the responsibility of raising Jewel and her
01:16brothers when they were children. But he struggled greatly to do so, in large part because his own
01:21upbringing was quite terrible. Jewel told People,
01:24As much as we have a genetic inheritance, we have an emotional inheritance. My dad was also
01:29raised in a wildly abusive home. I had a way better go of it than he did when he was young,
01:34but it still wasn't good. But a troubled childhood was far from the only problem.
01:39Jewel added,
01:40My dad had really bad PTSD from serving in the Vietnam War. But those words weren't really
01:45known at the time. He tried to drink to handle the anxiety, and he became abusive.
01:49So when my mom left, and he was just left trying to figure out how to handle it,
01:53he reverted to the emotional English that he knew, which was becoming an alcoholic and
01:57becoming abusive. Eventually, the situation became so rough that she left home at 15 years
02:02old to live in her own place. It was not until her father was much older, in his 60s, that he
02:07finally sobered up and the two were able to reconcile. Throughout her career, Jewel has
02:12had to deal with all sorts of sexism, or outright vile behavior from men, which began long before
02:18she became famous. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the singer revealed a
02:22shocking aspect of her early life and said,
02:25I've had men hitting on me, sadly, since I was really young. At eight, I had men putting
02:29dimes in my hand saying, Call me. It'd be so great to f**k when you're older. And just horrible
02:34stuff. As she got older, the situation only increased in intensity. As Jewel explained
02:39in her memoir, in order to survive where she grew up in rural Alaska, the teen was forced to adapt.
02:45For the worst cases, this included the need to, in her words,
02:48shut down advances in a way that kept the man's ego and temper intact.
02:53Initially, Jewel struggled with her classwork as a kid, and it would take years for her to
02:58figure out why. Yet, while the revelation of her condition made things a little bit better,
03:09her academic life became almost unbearable after making the mistake of living with her aunt in
03:14Hawaii. At the public school there, Jewel was not only threatened with physical violence,
03:19but she also endured all sorts of verbal discrimination from her fellow students.
03:23She recalled, I nearly got jumped every day and learned to keep my head down and be as
03:28invisible as possible. When Jewel went out into the world to make a living on her own,
03:33she could not seem to catch a break and found herself employed by some of the scummiest men.
03:38While working in the service industry, one of her bosses tried to get her to pose for a calendar
03:42photoshoot, as she explained in her memoir. She didn't want to, and told him to keep dreaming.
03:47But then the situation deteriorated even further when Jewel saw him pressuring another woman to do
03:52the same thing. She intervened and was fired right there. Luckily, Jewel managed to get another job
03:58right away. But when her next boss asked her out and she turned him down, she ran into another
04:03major problem. The artist tried to be as polite as possible, but apparently that was not enough.
04:08When she went to pick up her check, he continued to be disrespectful and wouldn't give it to her.
04:13The singer was devastated because she desperately needed the cash to pay rent,
04:17and knew the lack of it meant she would likely face eviction. She wrote,
04:21I felt hopeless and doomed. My only value seemed to be in men's perverted interest in sex.
04:26I felt hollow, worthless, and incapable.
04:29I ended up homeless because I wouldn't have sex with a boss,
04:32and I didn't want to be leveraged. And so I started living in my car,
04:35then that's how I became homeless.
04:37Unable to afford rent after she was fired from her job, Jewel was forced to live out of her car.
04:42In an interview with Substream magazine, the singer explained,
04:45Getting food, water, and shelter was exhausting. The amount of anxiety I had left me so sick and
04:51fatigued. I was always moving, without a physical address to provide to potential employers.
04:56Jewel also learned the hard way how extremely difficult it was to get out of her predicament.
05:01But that was not even the worst of it. She told Today,
05:04For me, the hardest thing was being treated as if I was subhuman,
05:07as if I didn't matter. People looked at me like I was absolutely disgusting.
05:11I wanted to yell at them and say, I'm human. I may not have a house, but I matter.
05:16Shortly after, she hit absolute rock bottom as her vehicle was stolen,
05:20leaving her without shelter of any kind.
05:23During one of the darkest periods of her life while living out of her car,
05:27Jewel faced her greatest challenge yet that could have very possibly killed her.
05:31Without the means to afford the necessary medical care she needed,
05:34let alone any type of insurance, the young artist became gravely ill. She didn't know
05:39what she had, and without the resources to get treatment, her condition worsened to a dangerous
05:44degree. It was just this vicious cycle. I'd try and get a job, but I got sick too much to keep
05:48the job. Once it became apparent that her condition was not improving, Jewel went to
05:52the emergency room but was still rejected. However, she finally received a vital bit of hope at what
05:58appeared to be the last possible moment. When talking with Today, the singer recalled,
06:02Thankfully, a doctor had seen me get turned away. I was dying of lead poisoning,
06:07and he gave me some antibiotics and saved my life.
06:10Especially when Jewel was young and her career was taking off in the 1990s, music industry
06:16DJs and journalists said some extremely inappropriate things to her on several occasions.
06:21In an interview with Stereogum, the artist recalled one time live on air in South Carolina
06:26when the interviewer introduced her by saying,
06:28Hey, you may have heard me describe my next guest as a large-breasted woman from Alaska.
06:33Jewel, how are you?
06:35These days, it may seem unthinkable that someone would treat another human being that way,
06:39let alone get away with it on air. Jewel always fought back with her own insults,
06:43and she was sometimes kicked out of the radio stations where the interviews took place because
06:48of it. But radio hosts were far from the only problem. One of the most well-known instances
06:53was when she was interviewed by Kurt Loder on MTV. In the 1990s, it was a big deal for musicians
06:59to get the opportunity to appear on the network. But unfortunately for the singer, her interviewer
07:04ruined that special moment. Not only was Loder rude, but he went on to bluntly insult her
07:09intelligence by pointing out how she misused the word casualty in a poem.
07:13There are people selling thoughtlessness with such casualty. Casualty doesn't mean that.
07:18Does it? I mean, casually is like a guy gets his arm blown off.
07:21When talking with Stereogum years later, Jewel described the conversation and said,
07:25He was setting me up, and then he dropped the hammer or something as if to expose me that
07:30I wasn't educated or something. I am uneducated, straight up, an uneducated kid that was homeless.
07:35You smartass for pointing that out. Next topic.
07:39Sometimes it is very difficult for someone to see what a close family member truly is,
07:44and this was sadly the case for Jewel regarding her mother, Lenedra Carroll.
07:47The brutal wake-up call occurred well into adulthood, when the artist was horrified to
07:52discover that Carroll embezzled over $100 million from her, which was all her wealth.
07:5734 years old, realized I'm $3 million in debt, realized my mom stole it.
08:02From that point forward, the musician has seen her mother in an entirely new light,
08:07and was forced to go back and rethink many of their previous interactions.
08:10This more than anything is what led Jewel to the depressing realization that her mother
08:14had abandoned her as a child, even though Carroll blamed it all on her father the entire time.
08:20In 2003, just weeks before Jewel was about to embark on her latest tour,
08:25she received horrible news that caused her to cancel the entire thing before it could begin.
08:30The singer's friend and touring bassist, Terome T-Bone Hannon, had been a part of her team since
08:352000. Before that, he had performed with other huge stars like Shania Twain and Amy Grant. Yet,
08:42his respectable career came to a tragic end when he unexpectedly died from a brain aneurysm.
08:47Jewel was rocked by the heartbreaking event and released a press statement that said,
08:52"'T-Bone was a phenomenal player and we all loved him. We are all just in shock and hurt.'"
08:58Jewel met professional rodeo rider Ty Murray in 1999, but it wasn't until a year later that she
09:03went to see him perform in California, and the two began to date afterward. Even though their
09:08careers made the situation difficult, especially with the amount of traveling the singer did for
09:13tours, they were determined to make it work. In her memoir, Jewel said,
09:25"'I was tired and I was in love, and I wanted to give my relationship with Ty a chance.'"
09:30The couple was able to figure it out and tied the knot in 2008,
09:33followed by the birth of their son, Case, a few years later. But during their six years
09:37of marriage, cracks gradually formed in their bond that eventually reached a breaking point
09:42in their subsequent divorce. Jewel explained,
09:45"'We worked hard on our relationship, but it became evident to me that while we loved each
09:49other dearly, we were hurting our love, not building it. And we did not want that to be
09:54what our son grew up to see.'"