Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome to love Someone with Delilah. This podcast is
Speaker 1: about enriching, enriching your life, one heart at a time.
Speaker 1: That is why I do this podcast because I want
Speaker 1: your life to be filled with love, with meaningful relationships.
Speaker 1: I want to inspire you to change the world for good.
Speaker 1: Just to recap, our last episode was an amazing conversation
Speaker 1: with Jewel. She had so much to share. Oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: that girl has so much to share that I decided
Speaker 1: to split our conversation into two podcasts, two conversations, because
Speaker 1: I didn't want to edit it down and make it short.
Speaker 1: I didn't want you to miss a moment of what
Speaker 1: this brilliant, talent to fascinating woman has to say. So, Jewel,
Speaker 1: we talked about your background, your family, um living in
Speaker 1: Alaska in a crazy situation, and we talked about anxiety
Speaker 1: and depressions, specifically with at risk youth. I want to
Speaker 1: pick up and continue this conversation with your book. Yeah.
Speaker 1: My favorite thing about this book was discovering practical steps.
Speaker 1: You know, the stuff like I mean, interesting to talk about,
Speaker 1: But unless you can create exercises you can practice every
Speaker 1: day that create new neural pathways, you're not going to change.
Speaker 1: So for me, that's my favorite part of the book
Speaker 1: is really helping create small, doable stuff. What's the name
Speaker 1: of the book? We just keep calling it the book.
Speaker 1: I don't know yet. I'm just comit of it. I
Speaker 1: need help on the title. Jewel's new book yet to
Speaker 1: be titled. We'll just call it, like you know, prints
Speaker 1: the Yah, the book yet to be titled, which will
Speaker 1: help you to make healthy choices and take healthy steps
Speaker 1: to rewire your brain so that you're not thinking that
Speaker 1: you know, getting slapped across the face is love, or
Speaker 1: that eating your way into oblivion like I do when
Speaker 1: I'm hurting is a healthy behavior. Do we know when
Speaker 1: it might be released? You're the first person I'm talking
Speaker 1: to about it. Oh my gosh, this is exciting. It's
Speaker 1: like you just announced your pregnant, your birthing. A book
Speaker 1: that's going to help change people's lives forever, and I'm
Speaker 1: the first person that gets to talk about it. This
Speaker 1: is awesome. It's like I'm looking at your ultrasound and
Speaker 1: we don't know yet if it's a boy or a girl,
Speaker 1: But that's okay. It's forming, it's in the formative steps.
Speaker 1: How cool is this? Oh my god, I'm so excited.
Speaker 1: So um. I ment in a little while ago that
Speaker 1: I have a lot of kids, and I briefly glazed
Speaker 1: over the fact that that my my husband just lost
Speaker 1: his son. And in seven years we've lost three boys. Yeah,
Speaker 1: one cysycle selenemia. One we don't know what to yet
Speaker 1: because the autopsy reports after eight weeks still have not
Speaker 1: come back. UM, and one to mental illness m hm.
Speaker 1: And I love the factual that you are courageous enough
Speaker 1: to talk about anxiety and mental health and making better choices.
Speaker 1: When I was growing up, I knew how it was raised.
Speaker 1: It was going to be the cycle that repeated itself,
Speaker 1: and I didn't want to be a statistic and it
Speaker 1: was very frustrating that we can go to school to
Speaker 1: learn Spanish and math and English, but there really isn't
Speaker 1: a human school. We really aren't taught the amazing creative
Speaker 1: power of what our emotions do and how we can
Speaker 1: create our life and our reality. And mental health is
Speaker 1: important to everybody because we all have a brain and
Speaker 1: we all have emotions and when I look at me too,
Speaker 1: and bullying and suicide and opioid addiction, gun violence, etcetera. Etcetera.
Speaker 1: It's all a mental health issue. It's all an emotional
Speaker 1: health issue, and none of us are separate from it
Speaker 1: because we all have emotions and minds. And so I've
Speaker 1: really dedicated my life to creating tools to help people
Speaker 1: have a sense of self agency, to solve for the anxiety,
Speaker 1: to solve for their depression, because to me, it's the
Speaker 1: most epidemic crisis that we have, and none of us
Speaker 1: are not touched by either friends that have taken their
Speaker 1: lives or are addicted, or we are self struggle with
Speaker 1: those things. I think it's the single most important issue.
Speaker 1: We are not taught what to do with anxiety, and
Speaker 1: that's unacceptable. It's really unacceptable because it is solvable. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm very dedicated to it, and I'm really sorry sorry
Speaker 1: for your losses. The grief of that is I can't
Speaker 1: imagine how to offload all that. That is a lot.
Speaker 1: It is a lot, and thank god we can talk
Speaker 1: about it now. You know, I lost my brother when
Speaker 1: I was a young woman, and and losing my brother,
Speaker 1: I lost my my mom and my dad because they
Speaker 1: had no place to to process or take their grief.
Speaker 1: You know, you're just supposed to suck it up and
Speaker 1: move on. I know we have no place to take
Speaker 1: a break and heal. You know, what is a parents
Speaker 1: supposed to do in those situations? What are you supposed
Speaker 1: to do? We need to create places where we can
Speaker 1: support someone like your mom or you, to give them
Speaker 1: a place to heal, to let their nervous system relax.
Speaker 1: What's interesting about grief is our society really wants to
Speaker 1: rush us through it and accelerated greate hacks for solving
Speaker 1: for grief, and we really misunderstand the neighborhood and grief
Speaker 1: want wait, wait, wait, Jill, go back and say, I
Speaker 1: just I love what you just said. Is that again,
Speaker 1: create hacks a space? Oh yeah, our society is obsessed
Speaker 1: with all these hacks and it isn't making us healthier happier.
Speaker 1: Like I don't know if we can really call us
Speaker 1: progressed if we're not any happier. Our society is so advanced,
Speaker 1: but we're no happier. In fact, for much less happier.
Speaker 1: Suicide is up six across every demographic since two thousand
Speaker 1: and six. That's unacceptable. So we don't need to be
Speaker 1: thinking of hacks. We need to be thinking of how
Speaker 1: do we honor the feelings that we have, and grief
Speaker 1: at its core causes our system to dilate, but we
Speaker 1: want to fight it. We want to contract around grief
Speaker 1: and not experienced when we let our systems dilate. Grief
Speaker 1: is really asking us to connect to life in a
Speaker 1: much deeper way than we ever have. It's asking to
Speaker 1: understand the nature and the value and connect. And if
Speaker 1: we aren't given a place to do that, to dilate,
Speaker 1: to grieve, to let it out, to connect, to have
Speaker 1: deeply life affirming experiences while we grieve, we're going to tank.
Speaker 1: And it's sad because these are again simple misunderstandings about
Speaker 1: what an emotion is wanting from us, what it's asking.
Speaker 1: The intent of grief is asking us to dilate and
Speaker 1: connect to life, and it's going to teach us about
Speaker 1: life in a way that nothing else can. It's going
Speaker 1: to build an empathy in us the way nothing else can.
Speaker 1: It is a very survivable emotion, but it should help
Speaker 1: us connect in a much more profound way. We should
Speaker 1: come out of the other side of grief more empathetic,
Speaker 1: more connect and more life affirmed. How many of us
Speaker 1: can say that happens? Very few I'm I'm just listening
Speaker 1: in awe because I cannot tell you how many people
Speaker 1: have treated the losses in our life like you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's been a year, get over it. Um.
Speaker 1: If somebody told you they were pregnant, would you say
Speaker 1: you should go in to the hospital and deliver today,
Speaker 1: you're eight weeks along. Let's get over this, Let's push
Speaker 1: that baby out, Let's get on with this. No, if
Speaker 1: it takes nine months to form a life that is
Speaker 1: sustainable outside of the womb, forty weeks, how much longer
Speaker 1: does it take to to heal from losing that life?
Speaker 1: And it's it's a death. As you know, when we
Speaker 1: lose a loved one, it causes a part of us
Speaker 1: to die. And we have to be very actively engaged
Speaker 1: in our own gestation and our own process of how
Speaker 1: do we want to be reborn from this experience because
Speaker 1: it's transformative and we should be allowed the room in
Speaker 1: space to say. Half of me is sad and grieving,
Speaker 1: and the other half of me is starting to dream
Speaker 1: who I want to be on the other side of this?
Speaker 1: How do I want to let this experience transform me?
Speaker 1: Life is full of all these wild and untamed energies, joy, loss, love, gain.
Speaker 1: All of these experiences like paints surrounding us, and we
Speaker 1: get to decide how we want to leave them together
Speaker 1: into our systems, to decide how we want to let
Speaker 1: those experiences transform us. We can't control what experiences come
Speaker 1: down the pike for us, but we do get to
Speaker 1: really actively engage in how we want to let them
Speaker 1: transform us. And again, we just aren't given a human
Speaker 1: school of being able to look at it like that
Speaker 1: and go, oh, okay, grief is this opportunity. What do
Speaker 1: I want to do with it? What do I need
Speaker 1: to help transform? This simple exercise number one that that
Speaker 1: I could share with somebody, you can share with somebody
Speaker 1: who suffers from immobilizing anxiety. For me, with anxiety, I
Speaker 1: always thought something was wrong with me. I have this
Speaker 1: much anxiety, something must be wrong with me. And I
Speaker 1: started to flip that script and say, what if it
Speaker 1: means something's right with me? What if my anxiety is
Speaker 1: a clue? But how I'm engaging with my life doesn't
Speaker 1: really work. And instead of spending all this time and shame,
Speaker 1: spend this energy and dedicated to getting curious what in
Speaker 1: my life is making me in conflict with my own life.
Speaker 1: How I'm engaging in life that's creating me to be
Speaker 1: in conflict with my own life. And once I started
Speaker 1: doing that and sitting still in the morning and really
Speaker 1: contemplating it, it was like having a little neon signed
Speaker 1: to where I kind of got excited when I got
Speaker 1: anxious because it was like, oh, the neon sign. Something's
Speaker 1: out of sorts, and it's just asking me to look
Speaker 1: at it. That's it. No need for shame, self approach
Speaker 1: meant all of these things, um, And so sometimes just
Speaker 1: the simplicity of flipping the script and saying it doesn't
Speaker 1: mean something's wrong with me. It means something's right with me.
Speaker 1: It's an opportunity to look at what is authentically me.
Speaker 1: How are my inside values not being represented in my
Speaker 1: outer life? What things am I doing? Maybe it's not
Speaker 1: getting that sleep. Maybe it's the fact that of a
Speaker 1: job I hate. Uh. Maybe it's said I need to
Speaker 1: spend more time in quiet and give myself some time
Speaker 1: to meditate. When you said still, you'll start to figure
Speaker 1: those things out and then you need to stop doing
Speaker 1: them otherwise you will keep being anxious. And here's the
Speaker 1: thing in our society in our world today, setting still
Speaker 1: doesn't happen very often. Sitting still. We've got so many distractions.
Speaker 1: We might be setting, we might not be getting exercise,
Speaker 1: but we're setting on our device, scrolling through TikTok, watching
Speaker 1: you know, twelve second videos that mean absolutely nothing to
Speaker 1: us and have no bearing on our life, but it's
Speaker 1: distracting us from our life. Yeah, our anxiety. Imagine if
Speaker 1: you left a child home alone and they're too young,
Speaker 1: they're going to be really anxious and scared. They know
Speaker 1: there's nobody in the house keeping them safe and watching
Speaker 1: after them. Anxiety can be like that when we're not
Speaker 1: in the present moment. We're not home. When are rain
Speaker 1: is taking the past and projecting it into a future
Speaker 1: that hasn't even happened. We're not home. The only time
Speaker 1: we can keep ourselves safe is when we're present, right here,
Speaker 1: right now. When I was homeless, I had immense panic attacks,
Speaker 1: and what I really learned was that this fear was
Speaker 1: a thief. It robbed me as my only chance to
Speaker 1: show up, which was right now. And so a lot
Speaker 1: of times anxiety for me was a sign of like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm not home, I'm living in some future terrifying myself
Speaker 1: with from some future that hasn't happened, and so learning
Speaker 1: to meditate, learning to be mindful was a trumanous step.
Speaker 1: I was able to start not only getting out of
Speaker 1: my panic attacks, but noticing the triggers before they happened,
Speaker 1: and getting better and better at addressing my anxiety at
Speaker 1: earlier and earlier stages. Um Meditation and the word mindfulness
Speaker 1: are pretty misunderstood. They sound so mysterious, but it's really simple.
Speaker 1: It's just consciously being present for whatever it is. I
Speaker 1: created a website called Jewel Never Broken dot com that
Speaker 1: shares a lot of these exercises that I developed actually
Speaker 1: when I was homeless. It's a sulfur anxiety to help
Speaker 1: me learn how to be present. A neuroscientist named Dr
Speaker 1: Judson Brewer actually shows how why the exercises work and
Speaker 1: why they do rewire your brain. But they're very simple.
Speaker 1: There's three minute exercises that just help you to be
Speaker 1: consciously present. It's no more complicated than that. It's a
Speaker 1: free website, so it's it's a charitable website. Hold on
Speaker 1: Jewel Never Broken for anybody who wants to have more peace,
Speaker 1: more joy, deeper, meaningful relationships. UM healthier body, because when
Speaker 1: you're healthy emotionally, when you've got mental health than your
Speaker 1: physical health, usually it falls in line. A lot of
Speaker 1: people think, well, I'll take time to take care of
Speaker 1: this once I once I get to the gym and
Speaker 1: exercise and and join a gym that you know makes
Speaker 1: me feel strong and and it's kind of backwards. You know,
Speaker 1: once you're emotionally strong, then you're gonna you're going to
Speaker 1: be much more physically strong. Yes, yes, we're going to
Speaker 1: take a pause here in this conversation with Jewel for
Speaker 1: a brief message. Today's podcast features the amazing Jewel And
Speaker 1: when I say it, I mean that this lady, she
Speaker 1: is dynamic. She is one of the most compassionate, intelligent,
Speaker 1: strongest women I've ever had the pleasure to know. We
Speaker 1: continue our conversation with Jewel now. Um. In my book,
Speaker 1: I talk about in our body, we have three types
Speaker 1: of cell walls. There's permeable, a completely open cell wall
Speaker 1: where things and nutrients pass and come and go freely.
Speaker 1: There's semi permeable, where it's a more elective cell that
Speaker 1: only lets certain things in. And then we have cell
Speaker 1: walls that are impermeable. Nothing gets in them, and we
Speaker 1: become physically ill when a pathogen, when a when a
Speaker 1: bacteria or a virus penetrates what should be an impermeable
Speaker 1: cell wall, Our emotional health mirrors this. We have three
Speaker 1: types of emotional cell walls. If you will, you know.
Speaker 1: The outer permeable cell wall is just it's an easy yes,
Speaker 1: like I don't care where we eat, I don't care
Speaker 1: about movie we see. It's just easy. The middle cell wall,
Speaker 1: emotional boundary, is where you negotiate. It's like a maybe,
Speaker 1: it's like a I don't like eating with those people,
Speaker 1: but all right, or yeah it's not my favorite, but okay.
Speaker 1: It's where we're open for negotiation. And then are our
Speaker 1: innermost sync them. Our innermost emotional wall is a no.
Speaker 1: It's the things we can't compromise um our health or
Speaker 1: our children and those types of things. And when we
Speaker 1: tolerate the intolerable, when that inner sanctum is weak, we
Speaker 1: become emotionally ill. This is where emotional illness starts. And
Speaker 1: so I have a practice in the book that helps
Speaker 1: us strengthen that internal emotional cell wall so that we
Speaker 1: stopped tolerating the intolerable. You know, when a children is
Speaker 1: a child is abused, what happens is that inner wall
Speaker 1: gets erased. There now doesn't count, and it leads to
Speaker 1: tremendous emotional illness. Who knew? Who knew? When when I
Speaker 1: was playing your sweet songs all those years ago, listening
Speaker 1: to your voice that jewel is the voice of an angel,
Speaker 1: and and your physical appearance was so soft? Who knew
Speaker 1: that you had all this this wonderful wisdom just waiting
Speaker 1: to be birthed in this strength that is transformative? Who know?
Speaker 1: I didn't know either? How cool is that? Necessity is
Speaker 1: the mother of invention, that's for sure. Yeah, but a
Speaker 1: lot of people, a lot of us, have gone through
Speaker 1: a lot of hard times. The fact that you have
Speaker 1: spent the last several years using your experience, as painful
Speaker 1: as they may have been, and and hardships and truth,
Speaker 1: your your truth to to help others and reach out
Speaker 1: to others and change the world for good. That's what's awesome.
Speaker 1: We owe that to ourselves into others. It's funny in
Speaker 1: a world of so much false power, where we think
Speaker 1: our opinions are our power, we forget that a real
Speaker 1: active power is something that benefits you and your community.
Speaker 1: I was really lucky to be adopted by a Native
Speaker 1: family when I was young, but taught me things like that,
Speaker 1: you know what is an active power. It's something that
Speaker 1: benefits you and others, and it's important we all participate
Speaker 1: in that circle of life the same way you do.
Speaker 1: It's why you're doing your show and why you're talking
Speaker 1: about your very personal experiences because you know, deep down
Speaker 1: you're part of that circle. It's beautiful. One of the
Speaker 1: one of the people that came and stood by my
Speaker 1: side just right after Zach left. It was a friend
Speaker 1: that I had had in grade school and in high school.
Speaker 1: We kind of drifted apart. She chose um, she chose
Speaker 1: drugs and alcohol, and and I made other choices, but
Speaker 1: um we've always stayed connected. But when I lost Sack.
Speaker 1: She's been sober, clean and sober now for over thirty years,
Speaker 1: and during searching for her path, she discovered that her
Speaker 1: grandfather was was a full blooded Native American that had
Speaker 1: been taken off the reservation and forced into a reformation school.
Speaker 1: His air was good, his name was changed, and he
Speaker 1: lived with shame the rest of his life, hiding his
Speaker 1: true identity, and so she and her sons have done
Speaker 1: a ton of research and history and just reclaimed their
Speaker 1: birthright of who they are and who he was and
Speaker 1: who they are through him, and her deep, deep, deep
Speaker 1: faith just has been such a gift to me. Not that, um,
Speaker 1: not that my faith hasn't been everything, but she just
Speaker 1: daily would call or write or send me a note
Speaker 1: that just as I'm holding space, I'm saying prayers, I'm
Speaker 1: I'm here, I'm here to talk, I'm here to listen,
Speaker 1: I'm here to just set with you. And she went
Speaker 1: with me to where he left and we just sat there.
Speaker 1: I don't know how long we just sat there in
Speaker 1: that very sacred place. And while we were sitting there,
Speaker 1: two birds came and lit in the tree above us
Speaker 1: and started singing, and I knew it was both my sons,
Speaker 1: and so did she. And just being able to sit
Speaker 1: with somebody and hold that space with them, it's everything.
Speaker 1: It is. It brings the sacred back into what would
Speaker 1: be scarring, so sacred, so holy, so beautiful in mm hmm,
Speaker 1: in the midst of the most abject pain you could
Speaker 1: ever imagine, there's so much beauty. How weird is the
Speaker 1: true Delilah. It's very true. I'm getting chills, but it's
Speaker 1: very true. And when we are given the space we
Speaker 1: get to reclaim that, we get to allow that experience
Speaker 1: to transform into something holy, something that's beyond our understanding,
Speaker 1: that still hurts, that's something that's so much bigger with
Speaker 1: us that you can't help but be filled with in
Speaker 1: awe and to be able let the sacred come back
Speaker 1: into it is so healing. Rory Fie called me a
Speaker 1: couple of weeks after Zach left, and Rory Fike said,
Speaker 1: your son is your son's He only knew about Zach,
Speaker 1: but he said, your son is much more a part
Speaker 1: of your future than he is a part of your past. Ah,
Speaker 1: it's beautiful. And at the time I was like, how
Speaker 1: can I said, how can you say that? I'll never
Speaker 1: get to see him graduate I'll never get to see him,
Speaker 1: you know, find his true love. I won't get to
Speaker 1: hold my grand babies. How can you say that? He said,
Speaker 1: because this, this life is but a breath, and now
Speaker 1: you are going to look forward to the eternal so
Speaker 1: much more than you ever have before. And I went, well,
Speaker 1: m beautiful. So I'm glad I let my my son
Speaker 1: have a band in the garage. I gave him the
Speaker 1: whole upper part of the car poard. I'm glad that
Speaker 1: God gifted me with a kid that was filled with
Speaker 1: life and love and passion and and and silliness, and
Speaker 1: that I was able to to fully engage in that.
Speaker 1: M hmm. Yeah, that's another gift of presence. You know,
Speaker 1: we really regret when we can't show up in the
Speaker 1: moments that we do have, And it's a real beautiful
Speaker 1: thing to be present because you don't know what the
Speaker 1: future holds. Nope, none of us are promised the future.
Speaker 1: We just know what today is and today, Jewel, I'm
Speaker 1: so so proud of you. I can't wait to hear
Speaker 1: what the name of the book is. The name of
Speaker 1: the song that i've heard, No More Tears. Yeah? Is
Speaker 1: that going to be the name of the album too?
Speaker 1: Because I know it's a work in progress. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I'm so bad with titles. It's the last thing that
Speaker 1: comes to me usually under you know much to rest
Speaker 1: or like we need it today. Um, No More Tears
Speaker 1: was the first song I wrote for this project. It
Speaker 1: just came out of me, and it's about a lot
Speaker 1: of what we're talking about. This idea of I've been
Speaker 1: through a lot and I'm standing and I know I'll
Speaker 1: cry in the future, but it's different. Um, I've changed,
Speaker 1: I've embraced and it's it's a real life affirming song. Um.
Speaker 1: I wrote it. I've been working on a documentary about
Speaker 1: homeless youth, and when I was working with these kids
Speaker 1: and hearing their stories, you know, most of them are
Speaker 1: on the street because the street was safer than their
Speaker 1: home life. You know, is somebody that takes and foster children.
Speaker 1: The truth of that, and many of them, you know,
Speaker 1: parent is okay that they're gay and so we're beaten
Speaker 1: or a young girl was raped since she was four. Uh.
Speaker 1: We have all these assumptions about who is on the
Speaker 1: street and why, and we think that they're lazy. I
Speaker 1: know that wasn't the case for me. I ended up
Speaker 1: on the street because as I wouldn't have sex with
Speaker 1: the boss, he wouldn't give me my paycheck and I
Speaker 1: couldn't afford rent, and I got kicked out of where
Speaker 1: I was living. I started living in a car, and
Speaker 1: then my car got stolen and it was just a
Speaker 1: vicious cycle. And it's incredibly difficult, and so being able
Speaker 1: to share the stories and humanize who these people are,
Speaker 1: look at our our issues, how we're similar. I was
Speaker 1: very moved to write this song about my experience and
Speaker 1: about everybody's experience. M yeah, and it just started off
Speaker 1: the project. It was like it came out with a bang,
Speaker 1: and then it took me a while to write other
Speaker 1: songs that I thought were up to this level. Well,
Speaker 1: I've listened to it and it is beautiful. And Janie
Speaker 1: my producer who adores you um and Dianna my sister
Speaker 1: who adores you, who is my producer for the podcast,
Speaker 1: and saw you at the vineyard and said, oh my god,
Speaker 1: I had no idea that this woman has the depth
Speaker 1: that she had, is uh. And they're the ones that
Speaker 1: reached out and said you gotta you and Joel you'd
Speaker 1: you'd like you, you like You're passionate about so many
Speaker 1: of the same things. So that's where I heard the song,
Speaker 1: and it just resonated. You know, some songs are like wow,
Speaker 1: that's really pretty um, and then some songs just resonate like, uh,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to think where I was the first time
Speaker 1: I heard hands, But it was one of those songs
Speaker 1: that I have these big, huge, clunky man hands. If
Speaker 1: you look at the appendages at the ends of my
Speaker 1: arms there, um, they've never been something of beauty in
Speaker 1: the traditional sense of beautiful hands. I love my hands
Speaker 1: because they're my mom's hands. And I love my hands
Speaker 1: because I was laying in bed with my daughter one day,
Speaker 1: who has these lithe beautiful, um, musical hands. If if
Speaker 1: your songs were hands, they would be my daughter's hands. Um. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I said, I don't understand genetics, you know, how
Speaker 1: did I get these hands? And you got these beautiful hands?
Speaker 1: And she was like fifteen at the time, and she
Speaker 1: took my hands in hers and she goes, Mama bear,
Speaker 1: your hands are working hands. And then she tossed hers
Speaker 1: in the air like like Ballerina's and she says, mine
Speaker 1: are not. How that has changed now that she's the
Speaker 1: Mama bear and has her own daughter, and her hands
Speaker 1: are never still um. But that was the sweetest compliment
Speaker 1: that anybody has ever paid me about my hands. And
Speaker 1: I don't know, something just opened up inside of me
Speaker 1: that day, and I fell in love with these appendages
Speaker 1: that I had not particularly been fond of before, just
Speaker 1: because they are not graceful in in their shape and form. Um.
Speaker 1: But we all, uh, we all have things that we
Speaker 1: might not like. But when we look when we reframe
Speaker 1: it and look at it from a different perspective like
Speaker 1: my daughter did that day. Man, the beauty is just
Speaker 1: revealed in such a beautiful way. It's so true. That's
Speaker 1: amazing how much women we will torture ourselves over our bodies,
Speaker 1: when if we take care of what we have and
Speaker 1: value it. I don't know a body that isn't beautiful.
Speaker 1: You know, whatever type it is, they're beautiful. And it's
Speaker 1: just it's not all uniform. And it's very sad that
Speaker 1: we feel so subject to trends. You know, if Latino beautiful,
Speaker 1: big curves is finally you know, curves are allowed, Um,
Speaker 1: the really skinny girls really feel like, oh no, I'm
Speaker 1: not in fashion. Our bodies shouldn't be subject to fashion type.
Speaker 1: When Heroin Chic was in our poor Latina beautiful curvy
Speaker 1: sisters felt like that wasn't fashionable. If we're taking care
Speaker 1: of ourselves and healthy and honoring what we are, it
Speaker 1: is beautiful. Well, you are beautiful, Jewel, and I'm so
Speaker 1: proud to know you. Likewise, I'm so glad to get
Speaker 1: to reconnect. I'm so proud to see the path that
Speaker 1: you're on and the way that you are changing the
Speaker 1: world for good. I try to talk all the time
Speaker 1: about I was uninvited to a church one time I had,
Speaker 1: I had been invited there to to speak, and and
Speaker 1: I went and I talked about foster care, and I said,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't understand how if the only thing
Speaker 1: that the Almighty judges are religion on according to His
Speaker 1: Holy Word is how we care for orphans and widows
Speaker 1: and their affliction, why we've got half a million kids
Speaker 1: in foster care. I don't get it. I don't get
Speaker 1: how we we we can worry about some you know,
Speaker 1: the plank and or the spec in someone else's eye,
Speaker 1: and judge people based on the fact that they are
Speaker 1: not living according to to our standards. And yet we're
Speaker 1: not living according to God's standards. Because we got four
Speaker 1: seven thousand kids in foster care. That wasn't the message
Speaker 1: they were expecting. Good for you, though, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: sure there are people in the congregation that hurt you.
Speaker 1: Love is love. We just need to love more. God
Speaker 1: is loving and we do need to love more, but
Speaker 1: we need to love in a real way. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a verb. It's action oriented love. It's an action word.
Speaker 1: It is south peace. You know, peace. We think peace
Speaker 1: might be getting rid of things, you know, controlling our environment, more,
Speaker 1: getting rid of things that upset us, pieces of very
Speaker 1: active state. It's a verb, and it's just the willingness
Speaker 1: to come into harmony with what is. It's a process,
Speaker 1: it's work. Well, I'm excited to see the process and
Speaker 1: I can't wait to see. I can't wait to meet
Speaker 1: this child you are birthing in your new book and
Speaker 1: and in your new music. Well, thank you and thanks
Speaker 1: for your your help in getting it out there. Um,
Speaker 1: it was really scary for me to engage in my
Speaker 1: music again. You know, I really associated my music career
Speaker 1: with a lot of pain. I loved what I was doing,
Speaker 1: but I always thought my purpose and serving my purpose
Speaker 1: was much more important than taking care of myself. I
Speaker 1: really hurt myself. I exhausted myself, I depleted myself. I
Speaker 1: surrounded myself and people that didn't care for me and
Speaker 1: ignored all of it because I thought I was serving
Speaker 1: my purpose. And when this song came to me, No
Speaker 1: More Tears, I was kind of terrified because I knew
Speaker 1: deep down I needed to go back to music, but
Speaker 1: the way I engaged with it, I couldn't do that again.
Speaker 1: And I really believed that I could never be successful
Speaker 1: unless I was doing what I did before, which was
Speaker 1: five shows a day, any cities a day, killing myself.
Speaker 1: And so it's been interesting really sitting with my fear
Speaker 1: just around music, something that's so natural to me that
Speaker 1: I had issues around of saying, all right, I'm willing
Speaker 1: to do this, I'll have to do in a new
Speaker 1: way where I don't hurt my health. And so it
Speaker 1: means a lot to me to be able to do
Speaker 1: this with you and have this experience that's so beautiful
Speaker 1: and I'm not exhausted, So thank you. Here's the thing
Speaker 1: that you have learned and that I wish others would
Speaker 1: learn now. You own your music in that it's a
Speaker 1: part of you and it's an expression of you. But
Speaker 1: the music industry, which is completely separate from the music,
Speaker 1: doesn't own you. And I love that, you know though,
Speaker 1: it was never the industry that did it to me.
Speaker 1: It was always me. Really yeah, I was willing, I
Speaker 1: in fact believed, and part of it's true. Nobody should
Speaker 1: enter any new job if they're not willing to grind hard,
Speaker 1: but there's a line where it becomes insane. I didn't
Speaker 1: know that line. Um. Yeah, label never asked me to
Speaker 1: dress a certain way and make a certain kind of music.
Speaker 1: I always, you know, had a ton of autonomy in
Speaker 1: what my art did and how I did it. But
Speaker 1: it was me that just ran myself incredibly hard. Again,
Speaker 1: when you're raised in an abusive system where you were
Speaker 1: never nurtured or treated a value, I certainly didn't know
Speaker 1: how to do that for myself. And I through work
Speaker 1: at it um and I thought the work is what
Speaker 1: it took, the amount of insanity that I took on,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't. It turns out somebody told me years ago, Delia,
Speaker 1: You've got to stop being a human doing and be
Speaker 1: a human being. Mm hmm yeah, because there were you know,
Speaker 1: when I started, there were no women in this industry.
Speaker 1: There still are so few women in my industry. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And and I had to work twice as hard, twice
Speaker 1: as many hours, go to twice as many appearances, and
Speaker 1: I still, you know, wasn't wasn't getting the respect or
Speaker 1: the opportunities that that I felt I should have been.
Speaker 1: But yeah, someone just said, you've got to be a
Speaker 1: human being, not a human doing. It's so beautiful being
Speaker 1: a woman. We do things differently, and it's sometimes hard
Speaker 1: when we come into an industry dominated by men because
Speaker 1: we think we have to do it like they do
Speaker 1: and they're much more linear than we are. Um. It's
Speaker 1: been really neat growing, you know, as a woman, becoming older,
Speaker 1: which I love, and realizing I just have a much
Speaker 1: more have a different way of engaging. I use my
Speaker 1: intuition a lot more. I don't do business plans. I
Speaker 1: feel my way through things. How I attract opportunities is
Speaker 1: very different. Um, and it's been neat to learn. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm glad you're learning. Wonderful to have pioneers like you,
Speaker 1: you know, that are willing to go into these formats
Speaker 1: and show women that we can do it. Well. I
Speaker 1: don't know that that I was a pioneer. Well I
Speaker 1: guess I was. I was and I am. But mostly
Speaker 1: I'm just really stubborned, Like, don't tell me I can't
Speaker 1: do something me too, People like, how have you kept going?
Speaker 1: I'm like, I'm stubborn. It's really not a talent. It's
Speaker 1: not a talent. I'm just willing. I didn't have a
Speaker 1: business plan. I didn't have a game plan. I just
Speaker 1: have a whole lot of stubbornness. M hmm, and so
Speaker 1: far it's working out pretty good. I want to be
Speaker 1: uh if you have a home delivery or a hospital
Speaker 1: delivery with this book that you are delivering, I want
Speaker 1: to be in the waiting room uh as as soon
Speaker 1: as it's like rolling off the press, because I really
Speaker 1: want to read it and I really want to share it.
Speaker 1: Because that's what my podcast, that's what my radio show,
Speaker 1: that's what my life is all about, is helping people
Speaker 1: to use the gifts and the talents and the skills
Speaker 1: that God has given them to make their world and
Speaker 1: the world at large a better place. And all the
Speaker 1: all the tools that we can gather that help us
Speaker 1: do that. The stronger and better will be eight men.
Speaker 1: Our whole lives shouldn't be spent getting over our past.
Speaker 1: I'm happy to arm people so we can have a
Speaker 1: great future where we're not relative to our past. Somebody,
Speaker 1: uh boss that I used to have, was talking about
Speaker 1: a coworker who said they're a belly button examiner. I said,
Speaker 1: what she goes? He spends all of his time and
Speaker 1: energy talking about his past instead of living in the present.
Speaker 1: And every time I would think of that person, then
Speaker 1: I would imagine them standing, you know, naked, staring at
Speaker 1: their belly button. But there's a fine line between being
Speaker 1: introspective and honoring yourself and staring at your belly button. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's where change is hard. We do have to
Speaker 1: look backwards to understand the nature of what we're working with,
Speaker 1: to understand how we have to transmute it and transform
Speaker 1: it to change. But a lot of us get stuck
Speaker 1: at looking at the past, and so we never change.
Speaker 1: We just stay relative to all of our past trauma
Speaker 1: and we can't quite move on. That can happen in
Speaker 1: therapy too, you know. I mean, how many therapy sessions
Speaker 1: have we been in or our friends have been in
Speaker 1: where it's like nothing's changing. I just keep talking about it.
Speaker 1: It's that change thing is pretty hard misunderstood. Thank you, Jewel,
Speaker 1: God bless you. I'm so proud of you. And give
Speaker 1: your boy hugs and tell him to bang those drums
Speaker 1: as loud as he possibly can. Have you ever has
Speaker 1: he ever gone to drum circle? No, that'd be so fun.
Speaker 1: I'll have to find one. Find a drum circle. Take
Speaker 1: your boy and be blown away. That's a great idea,
Speaker 1: all right, thank you for spending time with me. Yes,
Speaker 1: thank you. I'll talk to you so alrighty, have a
Speaker 1: great pap.