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Jewel: But it’s the same. It’s just a different side of the same coin. Looking at emotionality and how we raise boys, for me it has been going back and really studying masculinity among indigenous cultures; the rites of passage from a male perspective, and not putting my female perspective on it. But instead, learning about masculinity in an indigenous way as well as realizing I would have a tendency to want to over empower my child’s feelings. Learning that you can’t use your feelings as a tactic is really important for a child, especially for a child that has a mom that’s like, “I care about your feelings (laughs),” which I do. But right now, the world isn’t having a lot of authentic feelings, it’s having a lot of reactions. It’s using volatile and highly emotionally charged reactions to bully people into behavior. That’s the role type of being woke now. I find that really interesting, and something I’m thinking about right now with my son is, “How do I implement him learning to self-assess because we don’t want to have a reaction. We want to have a thoughtful and centered response. That’s powerful. That where you’re in your body and in your heart, and you’re forming a response. That’s focused and intentional, versus just a reaction that is highly emotional. It’s a little nuance, but I think it really matters. AK: Can great art be born out of joy and contentment, or do you feel that art is always the byproduct of trauma, pain, and processing pain? Jewel: Both things are true, and so what do you want your life to be? I know a lot of artists that are stuck on a treadmill of self-imposed hatred, self-hatred, self-flagellation, because they believe it’s the only way, they can make art. Or I have friends that just stay high, and they only can write when they’re high. Whatever you believe is true. I personally believe art is much bigger than that. Art is just the mirror of life. A mirror doesn’t stop being a mirror because you’re happy (laugh). It’s a mirror all the time. It’s there to capture the imprint of all life and there is great beauty. There are poems that celebrate sheer joy and ecstatic ecstasy. I definitely would recommend any artist to take themselves off the cross upon which they have nailed themselves, because your art can still be really potent and engaging and healing through beauty as well. AK: Good point. Do you pray, and if so, who or what do you pray to? Jewel: I do pray. I think prayer is as real an element as fire, water or wind. I don’t have a religious denomination, so I was raised with a lot of Native American culture and influence, and so my culture and my prayers tend to lean more toward that. AK: You grew up in the Alaskan wilderness with very little. As a teen you were homeless and had nothing, and then suddenly you had a lot. How did you acclimate and what is your relationship with material luxuries today? Jewel: I was lucky to be raised in Alaska with a lot of nature; big, wild, raw country. That was my church. I’m a really experience-based person and I wasn’t raised that way, nor did my personality ever feel hungry for material things in that way. My mom, however, if you read my book (Never Broken), she was very motivated by those things, and those things were very important to her. Money helps. Anybody that says money doesn’t help is full of it. It definitely cannot make you happy, which is why there are so many suicidal rich people, just like there are suicidal poor people, but it can remove a lot of stress. Having money for medical care, for airplane tickets, for food; those things have been such a relief in my life. It has been beyond a blessing. But other than that, I’m just not too motivated that way. AK: What makes you perfectly imperfect? Jewel: Life is about growth. When you enjoy growth, it means you really have to love your mistakes. I pray every day for the eyes to see how I can grow. That means every day I’m going to see things that I’m not great at. Perfection is really an addiction that we cling to, and we usually get addicted to it quite young, and it’s a system of deserving. When you are in a system of deserving, you become obsessed with performance so that you can earn your way into love. A lot of us are stuck on this hamster wheel of, “If I perform better, if I’m more extraordinary, I will earn my own respect and I will earn the respect of those around me, and earn my way back into heaven, as it were.” Perfection doesn’t exist, and so we’re constantly setting ourselves up for failure and pain. And God forbid you make money