Jewel Kilcher

Jewel Kilcher is the granddaughter of Alaskan pioneers. Her grandfather, Yule Kilcher, settled in Alaska after emigrating from Switzerland. He married Ruth, an aspiring opera singer, who left pre-war Germany so that her future children would be born into freedom. Jewel says, "My grandfather, Yule, helped draft the Alaska State Constitution. When they settled in Homer, it was a small fishing village with few modern conveniences. It might as well have been the 1840s."

Jewel was born in 1974 in Payson, Utah, where her father was going to college on the GI bill. When he graduated, the family returned to Anchorage, Alaska, where he practiced social work.

A musical family, Jewel's parents began singing together at dinner shows in hotels. When she was five, she joined them onstage as a singer and yodeler. Unfortunately, when Jewel was eight her parents divorced, and it was decided that the children (Jewel plus her older and younger brothers) would live with their father. They moved into a one-room house behind an uncle's machine shop, and Jewel slept in a narrow hallway closet on a loft shelf.

Jewel's father left his job as a social worker, and the two of them performed as a duo doing five-hour sets in honky-tonks, restaurants, lumberjack haunts, and bars. Two years later, the family moved to the saddle barn on the Kilcher homestead, where her grandfather still lived. There was no running water, and their only source of heat was a coal stove that went out in the middle of the night. Jewel often awoke with frost on her eyelashes. After milking the cow, feeding their horses, and doing the breakfast dishes, the children walked two miles in darkness to their school bus stop. The food they ate was what they raised with their own hands, and they wore hand-me-down clothes. "I have to say, I was proud to live off the land on our family homestead," says Jewel. "Alaska is a land of extremes. We had too much food in the summer, and not enough in the winter. It is a place that requires great preparation for consistent sustenance. It requires a hardy, practical, and energetic approach to life."

Not only did Jewel suffer from the obvious absence of her mother, but her father was unprepared to be a single parent. Not only was he physically abused as a child, he was a Vietnam war vet suffering from PTSD. In his depression and frustration over his divorce, he began to abuse alcohol, which led to abusing his own children. "Through the neglect and human frailty of both my parents, I began to doubt my worth, my instincts, and value," Jewel says. "So lasting are the scars of the child who never feels worthy of love. The negative lessons I learned from my mom and dad, which I'm sure they inherited from theirs, would take me many years to unlearn."

In the sixth grade, Jewel was diagnosed with dyslexia. A few years later, she taught herself how to focus her eyes so that she could see the black type rather than all the white space. She became an avid reader and developed a love of Greek philosophy and poetry. "That transformed my life," she says. "Through words, I was able to see the shape and power of my thoughts. I began to understand that my mind and my emotions could be the ladder out of my life. Reading the great poets and philosophers made me dream, which was something I had lost the ability to do."

At 15, Jewel left the challenging circumstances at home to live on her own. Too young for a driver's license, she rode her horse to her jobs in town, 15 miles away, or she would hitchhike wherever needed. She began to pay $400 rent on a cabin in the woods and held down several jobs while getting herself through school. One of her jobs was taking tourists on horse pack trips, something she had done since she was young. "I was able to work hard, that is one thing my family had in spades and that pioneering requires. No matter what, you have to get the job done. I helped my family on their ranch, ran hay equipment, and sang for money."

Thanks to a mentor, Jewel applied to the Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan, which offered her a partial scholarship, but she had only three months to come up with the remainder of the $10,000 tuition. Several women in town helped her put on a fund-raising concert, which netted her $5,000. The balance was taken care of by local celebrity Tom Bodett (the voice for the Motel 6 ads: "We'll leave the light on for ya"). "Practically my entire hometown of 3,500 people helped me to get to that boarding school," she says.

While in school, Jewel began writing songs, finding an outlet for her strong emotions and anxieties. Her thoughts often focused on her upbringing. "I began to think that I had to be a good parent to myself," she says. "I knew statistically I was likely to repeat the cycle by which I was raised, but I was determined not to be a statistic. I knew I had to start practicing something I had never been given or shown in my family: kindness, patience, and tolerance. I just wanted my parents to love me. I had some connection and was in contact with them, but they didn't function like normal parents."

After graduation, Jewel moved to San Diego, where she soon lost her job after refusing the advances of her boss. She subsequently began living in her car, until it was stolen and she became homeless. She almost died of sepsis due to an untreated kidney infection, after being turned away by the hospital for her lack of insurance. Luckily a doctor saw her in the parking lot, too sick to move, and gave her antibiotics. He saved her life. "I knew that jail, disease, or death were in my future if I did not get serious about turning things around for myself." Jewel got a once-a-week gig at the Inner Change Coffeehouse in Pacific Beach, which with time enabled her to buy a guitar and a VW van, her new home.

She began looking for a solution to her crippling anxiety attacks and bouts of agoraphobia. She developed exercises to retrain her brain and learn new habits. "Although I had no traditional resources, I learned that if I could be observant and curious and focused on the power of my thoughts, I have reserves of resilience and ways of overcoming my anxiety," explains Jewel. "These skills helped me go from surviving to thriving, despite the fact that I was homeless. It doesn't take money to be happy. It takes a willingness to look within and be accountable for your own happiness. A pivotal moment came when I realized no one was '˜coming for me.' I was coming for me. No one else '˜owed' me. I owed myself a lot."

At the age of 19, Jewel was the focus of a massive bidding war by every label in the music industry. After reading a book on the business, she decided to turn down a $1 million signing bonus, which she learned was little more than a loan and a reason to be dropped by her label if she failed to have record sales. Instead, she asked for rent to be paid on an apartment and for the largest "back-end" royalty rate ever awarded to a new act. "If I sold records," says Jewel, "I would be paid. Not before. This seemed honest and fair and allowed me to develop at my own pace."

Jewel signed a deal with Atlantic Records in 1994. The following year, her first album, Pieces of You, was released. It was not an immediate hit, but Jewel worked it steadily, touring the country as the opening act for her mentors and music legends Bob Dylan and Neil Young. Over the course of 1996, the album went to an astonishing 12-times-platinum level, making it one of the best-selling debuts of all time.

"What the press was calling an overnight success had been a lifetime of bar singing, writing, and years of grinding out three to five shows a day, 900 shows a year, often in two or three cities a day," says Jewel. "I went from selling several thousand copies over 12 months to selling 500,000 every month. It was staggering."

Jewel coped with her adversity by journaling and writing songs that told the truth about her inner journey, with lyrics that were considered artful and wise beyond her years. One of Jewel’s earlier hits, “Hands,” spoke of her personal discovery of “mindfulness” 20 years before the term would become popular in social vernacular. Her lyrics calmed a generation of listeners with the phrase “in the end, only kindness matters” and with “worry is wasteful in times like these.”

Heralded by the New York Times as “one of the best singer songwriters since Joni Mitchell,” and by producer Mark Burnett as “one of the best singer-songwriters of our generation,” Jewel has sold more than 30 million albums, graced the cover of Time magazine, and has had countless music awards and nominations. Refusing to be pigeonholed or play it safe, Jewel has experimented with several genres over her career with #1 hits in folk, pop, club, dance, country, and children’s music. She also loves singing the standards. Her love of writing inspired her to pen a book of poetry that became her first New York Times best seller.

But Jewel’s focus had to remain inward to keep her equilibrium in such fast-changing times. She stayed away from Hollywood and the celebrity lifestyle, holding closely to her passion for writing, mindfulness, and living a humble and values-based life.

Jewel’s mother returned to her life to be her manager, but, in 2003, Jewel was shocked to learn that she was bankrupt and in debt. “I had a blind spot when it came to my mother,” she says. “As heartbreaking as learning the truth about my mother was for me, I know I would rather see the truth than stay in love with a fantasy. My mother is not all good or all bad. I clung to the fantasy of a loving mother-daughter relationship until I had nothing left. The lesson cost me more emotionally than financially, but what I got out of it was hard-earned truth and wisdom. And that is worth any price. The truth always wins.”

Reeling after the relationship with her mother dissolved, Jewel took a break from touring to make sure her inner life was cared for. Years of betrayal and heartbreak had to be examined and repaired, causing her to conduct what she called a “loving archaeological dig back to her self.” Simultaneously, her father went on a similar journey of self-discovery and healing. The two have healed and now enjoy an ideal father-daughter relationship. Jewel says, “I feel I am getting to know who my dad was always meant to be.” Her father and family’s story is now documented on the successful Discovery Channel TV show Alaska, The Last Frontier, which is entering its ninth season.

Jewel has devoted much of her time to helping others. In 1998, she established Higher Ground for Humanity (HGH), a charitable foundation that provides clear drinking water to communities around the world, through her Project Clean Water charity. She recently formed a new charity called JewelNeverBroken, which offers emotional fitness and mindfulness skills to help others create change and find purpose in their lives.

“Helping people go from surviving to thriving is the next frontier in human development,” says Jewel. “It’s the most meaningful investment we can make as we look at complex problems such as gun violence, opioid addiction, and Me Too, which all have in common our inability to connect to ourselves and others in a healthy way. These skill sets are desperately needed to create healthy solutions in today’s rapidly changing world.”

Jewel’s memoir, Never Broken: Songs Are Only Half the Story, quickly became a New York Times best seller. It was written to shed light on her challenging journey and shares hope and solutions that have worked for her.

Jewel is creating human development, education, and mindfulness tools for individuals, by collaborating with school districts, corporations, and consumers, to become “WHOLE HUMANS.” This business will offer organizations a digital curriculum to increase happiness, productivity, and loyalty, while inspiring people to be less anxious, more resilient, creative, and entrepreneurial. Through this work, she has become one of the most notable spokespersons and advocates for the modern-day wellness and mindfulness movement.

Through her Never Broken Foundation, Jewel has created robust partnerships that help at-risk youth. When asked for the advice she would offer to young people in pain, she says, “You can’t outrun your pain. Medicating or numbing your pain will only bring more pain. Instead, go toward the discomfort, get curious, be kind, and you will find surprising ways to heal. You have brilliance and resilience beyond measure. Allow yourself to be surprised and transformed by getting to know the power of your unique beauty.”