Jewel has not always lived a life full of sparkle, as she cheated death as a homeless teenager.
Death’s Door
The multi-platinum singer-songwriter was left almost knocking on death’s door in an “emergency room parking lot” as medical staff “didn’t see me because I didn’t have insurance”.
But a hero doctor spotted the Who Will Save My Soul hitmaker getting turned away, and he “went out and he knocked on my door and he handed me antibiotics and his card.”
And the kind gesture saved Jewel’s life as, unbeknownst to her, she had sepsis, a life-threatening emergency where the body’s extreme response to an infection triggers inflammation, which can damage organs and tissues.
The four-time Grammy Award nominee declared it “the most transformative time in my life.”
Dark Teenage Years
However, that moment just made up one part of a dark chapter in Jewel’s teenage years. She then confessed to “shoplifting a lot” because of struggling to provide for herself.
One incident saw her “shoving a dress down my pants” in a dressing room. It was only when she caught her reflection in the mirror that the Foolish Games singer realized that if something failed to change, “I’m going to end up in jail or dead.”
To top it all off, Jewel was a homeless 18-year-old. She distanced herself from her mom, poet Lenedra Carroll, and dad, singer-songwriter Atz Kilcher.
The entertainer was forced to live out of her van for about a year because she struggled to pay rent for an apartment after she got fired from a job over rejecting a boss’s advances.
In 2014, Jewel, 51, told Redbook that at first she did not think “it was that big a deal.” She could “live in my car” while “saving up for a couple months” to get back on her feet.
But added, “I just didn’t. I kept getting sick, missing work, and couldn’t hold a job down because of that. Then the car I was living in got stolen, and not having an address to put down on a work application is a big problem. It was really frightening.”
Anxiety and Panic Attacks
Her experience with homelessness triggered crippling anxiety and panic attacks.
Jewel remembered during a town hall event on mental health that there were “days I thought I would just pass out. I have passed out from panic attacks, actually. But I kept standing up”.
Not long after, her life was transformed when she was discovered by Atlantic Records at the age of 19.
Jewel released her debut album, Pieces of You, in 1995. It led her to sell over 30 million albums worldwide.