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Pieces of You, which just celebrated its 25th anniversary last year. Hits like Standing Still, Hands, Who Will Save Your Soul, You Were Meant for Me, and Intuition, reflect Jewel’s evolutionary inward journey and continue to resonate, worldwide, throughout our human culture. It’s no wonder The Voice producer, Mark Burnett, calls Jewel “One of the greatest singer-songwriters in history.” Now, the forty-seven-year-old mother of one has devoted much of her public platform to mental health advocacy and what she gleefully calls her ongoing practice of “being consciously present” with her experiences. Jewel’s Never Broken (an nod to her hit song, Hands and her New York Times bestselling memoir) movement offers free mindfulness and mental health resources and what she calls “actionable exercises,” while her second annual World Mental Health Day Summit and Concert, is taking place, virtually, on Sunday, October 10th at TheWellness-Experience.com. Jewel’s anticipated upcoming album Freewheelin’ Woman, which reflects her personal and musical evolution of “being on this side of life,” as she lovingly calls her current chapter, will be released in Spring 2022. Allison Kugel: Tell me about your name Jewel. Is there a story behind your first name? Jewel: It’s a family name. My grandfather’s name was Jasper Jade Jewel Caroll, my mother’s name was Lenedra Jewel Caroll, and my other grandfather was Yule. The feminine pronunciation of that name was Jewel. It kind of came from both sides. AK: Interesting. Tell me about the three most significant events in your life that shaped who you are today. Jewel: I don’t really think that way, but the interesting thing I find about healing is that our stories can’t change. We can’t go back and change our history, but we can change how we relate to the story. We can change which features we make salient and important to us, and we can change which memories we draw on. A good example would be, growing up as a child I didn’t think I was lovable because my parents didn’t seem to love me or care for me. So, if you had asked me that question many years ago, I would have said a big part of my story was that I felt unlovable. Through time, and through healing, you start to realize it’s not that I was unlovable and it’s not even that my parents didn’t love me. It’s that my parents didn’t know how to love. Again, it’s not how your story changes, but how you relate to the story that changes. Realizing that my parents didn’t know how to love builds empathy. It builds a different sense of self-worth, because it’s not suddenly about me, or from an ego perspective, about my lack of ability to be loved or lovable, and it allows room for a different narrative. AK: At what age did you come to that conclusion? Jewel: I’ve been studying for the last couple of years, sort of a system of misunderstandings, and realizing that a lot of conclusions we draw about ourselves are based on a misunderstanding. It’s about looking through it through fresh eyes and saying, “Is that true?” and challenging that truth. It’s kind of a process I’ve always been interested in but looking at it in terms of misunderstandings and updating misunderstandings has probably been more in the last couple of years. AK: For me, personally, I always say that my parents raised me the best way they knew how, and then when I became an adult, I re-raised myself. Does that resonate with you? Jewel: Yes. I remember at some point thinking wouldn’t it be embarrassing if I spent my whole adulthood getting over my childhood (laugh). At some point, how do you start to transcend your story? You do have to heal and reclaim a lot of that narrative, and then you get to start saying, “Now, what do I want to do with it?” In my book (New York Times bestseller, Never Broken/Penguin Random House), I called it “an archeological dig back to my true self.” My life had a lot of drama and a lot of trauma. My mom left when I was eight. My dad was a Vietnam veteran who was trauma-triggered. He was abusive and an alcoholic. I moved out at [the age of] 15 and was paying rent. I was homeless by 18, because I wouldn’t have sex with my boss. I was living in my car and then my car got stolen.