Speaker 1: Superstar performer Jewel soul Stirring Music is the soundtrack of
Speaker 1: a generation. Her debut album is one of the best
Speaker 1: selling in history and went twelve times platinum. She sung
Speaker 1: at the Super Bowl, the White House, and for the Pope,
Speaker 1: but her path to success was wrought with trauma. Jewel
Speaker 1: grew up in Alaska without running water, was raised by
Speaker 1: a physically abusive father, and abandoned by her mother, all
Speaker 1: before the age of eight. She left home at fifteen
Speaker 1: and was homeless by eighteen. Against all odds, Jewel rose
Speaker 1: to stardom, yet was dealt another devastating blow when she
Speaker 1: discovered her mother stole millions of her hard earned money.
Speaker 1: On this special episode of Navigating Narcissism, the One and Only,
Speaker 1: Jewel reveals the most challenging parts of her healing, the
Speaker 1: revelation that still makes her tear up, and the fascinating
Speaker 1: techniques she's used to help her emotional recovery. From Red
Speaker 1: Table Talk Podcasts and iHeartMedia, I'm Doctor Rominy and this
Speaker 1: is Navigating Narcissism. This podcast should not be used as
Speaker 1: a substitute for medical or mental health advice. Individuals are
Speaker 1: advised to seek independent medical advice, counseling, and or therapy
Speaker 1: from a healthcare professional with respect to any medical condition,
Speaker 1: mental health issue, or health inquiry, including matters discussed on
Speaker 1: this podcast. This episode discusses abuse, which may be triggering
Speaker 1: to some people. The views and opinions expressed are solely
Speaker 1: those of the podcast author or individuals participating in the podcast,
Speaker 1: and do not represent the opinions of Red Table Talk productions, iHeartMedia,
Speaker 1: or their employees. Jule, I have been following your journey
Speaker 1: for several years. Your experience is the kind that hits
Speaker 1: you like a bolt of lightning and stays with you.
Speaker 1: You have so much to offer the survivor community, so
Speaker 1: thank you so much for joining me. I was really
Speaker 1: struck by your unique upbringing. Your family had a long
Speaker 1: history of homesteading in Alaska. You grew up on hundreds
Speaker 1: of acres without running water. Can you give us a
Speaker 1: little insight into your childhood.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so there's a good and a dark side, I
Speaker 2: think to my family history.
Speaker 3: I was raised on that homestead by my dad. My
Speaker 3: daily life was varied. We did move a lot, but
Speaker 3: a lot.
Speaker 2: Of my childhood was on the homestead, and I think
Speaker 2: that that exposure to nature. Actually, my dad once said
Speaker 2: we were given the illness and the cure, and I
Speaker 2: think that's very true. My dad has eight siblings and
Speaker 2: they had such a again amazing childhood but also kind
Speaker 2: of horrific. And I think the reason none of them
Speaker 2: have committed suicide. None of them are drug addicts. And
Speaker 2: don't get me wrong, but it's kind of striking that
Speaker 2: you could have eight kids raised in this environment and
Speaker 2: that none of them went darker. Is I think a
Speaker 2: real testament to the land and how the land, for
Speaker 2: me personally at least, taught me to be human.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about your dad then, because I've had
Speaker 1: the privilege of reading your book. Everyone should read jules book,
Speaker 1: by the way, And I know that he experienced abuse
Speaker 1: growing up and then some of that cycle continued to
Speaker 1: a certain degree. Can you talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: your father, because it's a complicated story with your dad.
Speaker 2: My father's childhood was psychologically, physically and emotionally abusive. I
Speaker 2: didn't know that though, of course, growing up, and so
Speaker 2: all I knew was my dad. I know my mom
Speaker 2: left at eight suddenly I was being raised by my father.
Speaker 2: My father went from like a Mormon like classic Mormon
Speaker 2: dad to drinking, smoking and hitting me pretty much overnight.
Speaker 2: So my mom left. I had no idea why. I
Speaker 2: didn't know actually she left. I just assumed my dad
Speaker 2: took us. And my dad suddenly hitting us, yelling, drinking,
Speaker 2: and smoking.
Speaker 3: So that was a radical shift.
Speaker 2: And it was, you know, obviously having your world turned
Speaker 2: upside down and we started singing a bars to make
Speaker 2: a living.
Speaker 3: Growing up in bars was not easy.
Speaker 2: I would have men put dimes in my hand and say,
Speaker 2: you know, call me when you're sixteen. You're going to
Speaker 2: be great to fuck when you're older. And so I
Speaker 2: just grew up in a wild environment. But I'm dyslexic,
Speaker 2: and for some reason, I think that causes me to
Speaker 2: see patterns, and I'm very visual. And what I was
Speaker 2: seeing was pain. I had a front row seat to pain.
Speaker 2: I was in pain. It was the most salient feature
Speaker 2: in my life. And what I was seeing in the
Speaker 2: bars and what I was seeing in my dad, I
Speaker 2: was like, oh my gosh, we're all in pain. And
Speaker 2: I was watching how people dealt with it over the years.
Speaker 2: I saw drug use, I saw rage, I saw sex,
Speaker 2: I saw illicit behavior, and I think I had just
Speaker 2: been learning about oysters in school and that oysters have
Speaker 2: an irritant like a bit of sand and they make
Speaker 2: a pearl. And I was like, I have this irritant,
Speaker 2: I have this pain, but I'm not making a pearl.
Speaker 2: None of us are making pearl. Why don't we make
Speaker 2: pearls out of this instead? Like the visual I saw
Speaker 2: was this hurt, this wound, and people would layer all
Speaker 2: these things to avoid it and to try.
Speaker 3: And bury it.
Speaker 2: But by the end of it, they were consumed in
Speaker 2: a mountain of other distractions that caused more pain. And
Speaker 2: for anybody to face that after so many decades was
Speaker 2: quite difficult. You had to deal with all this crap
Speaker 2: you've done and inflicted more pain on yourself basically just
Speaker 2: to go ahead and deal with this. And so to me,
Speaker 2: like I remember saying, pain, you know what do I
Speaker 2: do with pain? I remember writing down, and I remember
Speaker 2: the quickest way is through, and to kind of promise
Speaker 2: myself that I would try and deal with my pain,
Speaker 2: just out of a matter of practicality. But I didn't
Speaker 2: always know how to handle it, and so I tried
Speaker 2: to look to things that gave me relief. Writing gave
Speaker 2: me relief. It was very obvious that it did, didn't
Speaker 2: take it away, but something about moving toward it helped.
Speaker 2: And I learned about the buffalo from I don't know
Speaker 2: when I was like ten or something, and it was
Speaker 2: they're the only animal that moved to the heart of
Speaker 2: the storm, and that the quickest way again is through.
Speaker 2: And that's what gave me this role model of writing.
Speaker 2: For whatever reason, moved me toward my pain, and for
Speaker 2: whatever reason, that relieved the pain a little bit. It
Speaker 2: just made it slightly manageable. And for the pain I
Speaker 2: couldn't figure out what to do with that, I called
Speaker 2: putting a pin in it. Now you would call it
Speaker 2: just compartmentalized. I would just put a pin in it
Speaker 2: until I could learn what to do with it later.
Speaker 1: So your dad had been abused by his father. You'd
Speaker 1: say that if things didn't go his way or you
Speaker 1: woke him up, you'd have might gotten hit. And there's
Speaker 1: one poignant story that really stuck with me is that
Speaker 1: he hit you and your brother. You had to walk
Speaker 1: eight miles to school because you missed the bus with
Speaker 1: bloody noses in the cold Alaska weather, and then he
Speaker 1: came to school with your lunches almost looking ashamed and
Speaker 1: that something awoke in you that you're saying, I want
Speaker 1: to explain this to him. I want to connect the dots,
Speaker 1: which only enraged him again. And just that sequence, Jewel
Speaker 1: captured the trauma bond in sheer perfection. That probably three
Speaker 1: four our sequence. He wakes up, he gets frustrated, he
Speaker 1: takes it out on you and your brother physically, he comes,
Speaker 1: he brings the lunch. Oh maybe it sounds so bad,
Speaker 1: I could forget that. That's it. That sequence is the
Speaker 1: trauma bonded relationship, and it's an almost impossible cycle to
Speaker 1: break out of.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And there was also what we would call gaslighting
Speaker 2: when I sat down with them on the couch and
Speaker 2: I was like, oh my god, I think I see
Speaker 2: a pattern and I kind of see what happened, and
Speaker 2: I see what's leading to this maybe for him, and
Speaker 2: how it's affecting me, and I probably remind him of
Speaker 2: my mom. And I was so excited to share that
Speaker 2: with him. And I think that having a young girl,
Speaker 2: you know, try and explain your psychology not attractive to people.
Speaker 2: And he talked to me out of my truth and
Speaker 2: I didn't know better. I got confused. And that was
Speaker 2: one of the most traumatic. That more than being hit,
Speaker 2: was much more damaging to me because I went from
Speaker 2: feeling with certainty that I was seeing things correctly to
Speaker 2: doubting my own internal voice. And that was a bitch
Speaker 2: to recover from. Like I get chills talking about it.
Speaker 2: That took decades for me to figure out how to
Speaker 2: reinstate my own internal compass because I began getting It's
Speaker 2: funny now we have this term gaslight, but I began
Speaker 2: getting gas lit by both of my parents to where
Speaker 2: my own truth and my own ability to navigate became
Speaker 2: quite obscured and caused a lot of pain for many.
Speaker 1: Decades, which is really what the legacy of this is.
Speaker 1: The bruises, the scratches, the wounds they do heal on
Speaker 1: our memory conveniently pushes that out, but that emotional loss
Speaker 1: of losing your sense of knowing what reality basically, it
Speaker 1: can take a lifetime to heal from. How did you
Speaker 1: continue to cope with your home life as you grew up?
Speaker 3: I did move out at fifteen.
Speaker 2: I decided that it was just better to leave my
Speaker 2: dad than stay in this like intense arguing, fighting, physical
Speaker 2: dynamic and just go out.
Speaker 3: On my own.
Speaker 2: I knew that statistically doing that was quite dangerous, but
Speaker 2: I wanted to cut my losses. And that's kind of
Speaker 2: how I've always been, is like, can I do something different?
Speaker 3: Can I do better? How will I succeed?
Speaker 2: And so, rather than kind of fixating on anger for
Speaker 2: my dad, which I had a lot of anger, I
Speaker 2: decided to put all of my resources into going what
Speaker 2: makes me think I can move out at fifteen and
Speaker 2: not become a drug addict or a prostitute, because that's
Speaker 2: statistically what I should be destined to. And so I
Speaker 2: knew I had this genetic inheritance. I'd been learning about
Speaker 2: it in school. You know, we had a genetic inheritance
Speaker 2: that could give us a predisposition to diabetes.
Speaker 3: Or heart disease.
Speaker 2: But I saw this like an emotional inheritance. It was
Speaker 2: habits and emotional languaging that I was inheriting, and it
Speaker 2: was going to give me a predisposition to abuse, addiction, all.
Speaker 3: Kinds of things.
Speaker 2: And so what I realized I was up against was
Speaker 2: learning a new emotional language. And at least that felt
Speaker 2: like a clear objective. You know, I knew like I
Speaker 2: could go to school to learn Spanish, but there was
Speaker 2: nowhere to learn a new emotional language. But at least
Speaker 2: knowing what I was up against felt like a clear objective,
Speaker 2: and so I went my own way. I didn't think
Speaker 2: i'd ever see him again. I didn't honestly care. Maybe
Speaker 2: if I ever saw him again. I felt like what
Speaker 2: I was up against was such a monumental and dangerous
Speaker 2: proposition that I just had to put on my resources
Speaker 2: to that.
Speaker 1: How is your relationship with your father today?
Speaker 2: So my dad and I do have a good relationship. Now,
Speaker 2: all I can say is I didn't try and heal them.
Speaker 2: I didn't try and save them, not that I think
Speaker 2: it's bad. You know, each their own. I didn't know
Speaker 2: how to, and I just tried to focus on saving
Speaker 2: my own life. Basically, my dad in his sixties late
Speaker 2: sixties got sober and he wanted to figure out how
Speaker 2: to heal.
Speaker 3: On his own.
Speaker 2: I think, especially when my son was born, my dad
Speaker 2: really wanted to be involved, and he asked my permission,
Speaker 2: and you know, I'm sorry.
Speaker 3: He's nice.
Speaker 2: Not a lot of people get i'm sorry. My dad
Speaker 2: did say I'm sorry, but it doesn't mean you get
Speaker 2: a relationship back. Changed behavior earns back relationships, and so
Speaker 2: you have to trust yourself and your real sight, and
Speaker 2: that really comes through healing. I had to trust my
Speaker 2: ability to perceive my dad for who and where he
Speaker 2: was now, and behavior is everything. His behavior was different
Speaker 2: and it didn't come back to a relationship overnight, but
Speaker 2: through consistent changed behavior, I felt like it was worth
Speaker 2: having a relationship. I felt like it was not only
Speaker 2: safe for my son, but even beneficial. And so that's
Speaker 2: why my dad and I have a relationship. We met
Speaker 2: as two adults that had healed a lot, and that's
Speaker 2: a gift I certainly didn't think i'd be given in
Speaker 2: my life, but a lot of that is owed to
Speaker 2: my dad and ode to my own healing.
Speaker 1: You said something is so so important here, Juel, which
Speaker 1: has changed behavior is what changes relationships. I'm sorry. Is nice,
Speaker 1: but that's not how you can actually move into another
Speaker 1: phase of your relationship. And I'm so so happy for
Speaker 1: you that you and your father have been able to
Speaker 1: achieve that that your son will reap the benefits of
Speaker 1: your father's healing. It's not the norm, and I think
Speaker 1: that foul forever question do I reconnect? Do I not reconnect?
Speaker 1: Is this going to set me back? But as you
Speaker 1: put it that process of healing for you had to
Speaker 1: be you. This wasn't about I have to heal for
Speaker 1: my dad because of my dad, to convert my dad.
Speaker 1: But Jewel's going to go out and heal. And you
Speaker 1: said both of your parents gaslight? Did you? And I
Speaker 1: want to go back to talking. You said, your mom,
Speaker 1: I put a pin in that jewel, and I'm coming
Speaker 1: back using your metaphor? Is that your mother left at
Speaker 1: eight years old? You know, when I close my eyes
Speaker 1: and I think of what eight is and my own daughters,
Speaker 1: it's so young. And she left you at eight, which
Speaker 1: is unfathomable to either of us as parents, Right, anyone
Speaker 1: who's a parent, can you talk that and what that
Speaker 1: entire relationship with your mother looked like?
Speaker 2: It's hard to describe. My dad's kind of a much
Speaker 2: more cut and dry case. Being hit hurts, it feels wrong,
Speaker 2: it looks wrong. A guy that yells and gets angry
Speaker 2: is an easy villain to identify. I don't think my
Speaker 2: dad's a villain, but it's easy to identify that My
Speaker 2: mom was subtle and the abuse was a very different type.
Speaker 2: And it appeared as love, and it appeared as gentleness
Speaker 2: and appeared as safety, and it was perfectly set up
Speaker 2: by the fact that the volatility of my dad made
Speaker 2: this contrast of this calm, quiet woman who never yelled,
Speaker 2: who always said the right things, who said she loved me,
Speaker 2: who said I was incredible. I mean, you just you
Speaker 2: run to that, not knowing that you're consuming poison. You know,
Speaker 2: when I look at both my parents. There's a great
Speaker 2: book called Traumatic Narcissism by Daniel Shaw.
Speaker 3: It's my really hell me. Isn't it wonderful coreage?
Speaker 1: I mean, it is literally under my pillow. I've read
Speaker 1: it so many times.
Speaker 3: Is brilliant, It's wonderful work.
Speaker 2: And I want to make a really strong caveat I
Speaker 2: am not diagnosing my parents. I've just read books that
Speaker 2: helped me understand my own personal experience. One of the
Speaker 2: most interesting things he said is when you're raised by
Speaker 2: a traumatic narcissist, you either become one or you.
Speaker 3: Get married to one.
Speaker 2: Basically, I just sort of say that as a bit
Speaker 2: of perspective, because what my mom did I consider to
Speaker 2: be incredibly difficult and damaging. What I'm about to say
Speaker 2: about my mom is so inflammatory, it's easy to make
Speaker 2: her into this huge villain at the same time, I
Speaker 2: feel like somebody who was raised in an impossible circumstance
Speaker 2: by people who were raised in impossible and circumstances by
Speaker 2: people who were raised in impossible circumstances. But my mom
Speaker 2: is a complex psychological study. She's a very different animal
Speaker 2: than my dad, you know. So I went from this
Speaker 2: dad that hurts me, to hitchhiking to Anchorage to see
Speaker 2: my mom as a ten year old, to her saying,
Speaker 2: you know, you're so powerful. All people are so powerful.
Speaker 2: Our minds are so powerful. We only used ten percent
Speaker 2: of our mind. I mean, imagine what all the other
Speaker 2: brain can do. I wonder, like, I bet we're powerful
Speaker 2: enough to turn this light on and off with our mind.
Speaker 3: I mean maybe. And I was like, wow, that's cool
Speaker 3: thing to think about.
Speaker 2: And she's like, why don't you sit here and like
Speaker 2: stare at that light bulb and you see if it's possible.
Speaker 2: She's like, I really believe in you, which felt so good.
Speaker 2: And I sat there on the floor and I stared
Speaker 2: at a light bulb for four hours and I felt loved,
Speaker 2: and I felt seen, and I felt safe. And what
Speaker 2: I didn't see is that I was being babysat by
Speaker 2: a light bulb, okay, by mom that didn't really want
Speaker 2: to see me. So that's just a kind of good
Speaker 2: tiny image into maybe the nature of our relationship and
Speaker 2: how that evolved to ultimately being something that became incredibly
Speaker 2: psychologically damaging that I had to reckon with much later.
Speaker 1: It is interesting you brought up the topic of narcissism.
Speaker 1: I always tell everyone narcissism in and of itself. Jewele
Speaker 1: is not a diagnostic term. It's a description of a
Speaker 1: personality style. So I can tell you I'm introverted. It's
Speaker 1: not diagnostic. It's simply so who I am, how I
Speaker 1: go through the world. The word does not have a
Speaker 1: good connotation, but it's just merely a personality style that
Speaker 1: puts a person off and at odds with other people.
Speaker 1: It's very selfish. They put their needs ahead of other people.
Speaker 1: It's not well suited to parenting because of that. It's
Speaker 1: a concept I've talked about called multiple truths. Multiple things
Speaker 1: can be true of one person at a time. My
Speaker 1: mother made me feel special. My mother was fascinating. My
Speaker 1: mother believed in this power of the mind. My mother
Speaker 1: abandoned me. You know, there's a list of things your
Speaker 1: mom did your list of things your dad did, and
Speaker 1: all of those things coexist, and so can you walk
Speaker 1: us through how that relationship then unfolded for you as
Speaker 1: you now went through adolescence and her presence in your life,
Speaker 1: and then as you emerged into adulthood.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, there's my perspective at the time, which
Speaker 2: my mom was a saint to my dad was a
Speaker 2: bad guy. So real, binary, real, black and white. I
Speaker 2: realized with time much later that there was nothing wrong
Speaker 2: with me. I did what I was built to do.
Speaker 2: I attached to my mother. I was wired to do it,
Speaker 2: and so there was nothing wrong with me. There was
Speaker 2: something wrong with my mom's ability to attach. And so
Speaker 2: with hindsight you see the fault there that there was
Speaker 2: a tremendous wound for both my parents. And this isn't
Speaker 2: permission for them having hurt me. And I think where
Speaker 2: healing gets difficult for a lot of people is we
Speaker 2: don't always know how to hold space and say the
Speaker 2: truth is, these were hurt people. The truth is also
Speaker 2: it's not okay to hurt me.
Speaker 1: Correct.
Speaker 2: That's a difficult duality for people to inhabit. People tend
Speaker 2: to want to throw the baby out with the bath water,
Speaker 2: or make people all bad or all evil, and that
Speaker 2: isn't true. Hurt people, hurt people, and how we choose
Speaker 2: to hurt people because of our hurt has a lot
Speaker 2: to do with our own hurt and tools and lack thereof.
Speaker 2: I have a line in one of my songs called
Speaker 2: Goodbye Alice in Wonderland where my love was turned against
Speaker 2: me like a knife. I loved my mom, and I
Speaker 2: had a tremendous wound, a need right, this gaping hunger that, unexamined,
Speaker 2: informed not only my worldview but all of my choices
Speaker 2: and decisions. So this wound was actually causing me to
Speaker 2: be a puppet, and my hands were moving and my
Speaker 2: actions were all being orchestrated by my wounds, by my hurt,
Speaker 2: by my need for love, and I didn't see it.
Speaker 3: I didn't see the strings.
Speaker 2: That were my own wounding, my own desperate need for love.
Speaker 1: This is a beautifully crafted metaphor, the likes of which
Speaker 1: could have only come from such a gifted songwriter and poet.
Speaker 1: Jewel makes a brilliant point here. Our core wounds often
Speaker 1: guide us into treacherous situations and keep us stuck in
Speaker 1: unhealthy ones when those wounds aren't explored and addressed, we
Speaker 1: can drift into unhealthy relationships and find it nearly impossible
Speaker 1: to cut the strings and free ourselves. We will be
Speaker 1: right back with this conversation.
Speaker 2: This is the thing that causes you to be attracted
Speaker 2: to crappy, you know, relationships. This is the thing that
Speaker 2: causes us to make poor choices. Something my mom did,
Speaker 2: and she figured out how to manipulate me in a
Speaker 2: very masterful and very subtle ways, because my need for
Speaker 2: valid my need for love, my need for her approval
Speaker 2: was so great that it was kind of like a
Speaker 2: great martial artist that learns to use your own force
Speaker 2: and turn it against you.
Speaker 3: So she ended up becoming a co manager and a manager.
Speaker 1: In her best selling memoir Never Broken, Jewel writes that
Speaker 1: she soon felt as though she couldn't make any decisions
Speaker 1: without her mother. She was manipulated into believing that all
Speaker 1: of her success was because of her mom.
Speaker 2: My mom had to do very little to get me
Speaker 2: to do more and more of what she wanted. My
Speaker 2: own need for love, my own need to have a mom,
Speaker 2: the overwhelming hurt and abandonment, and all those things got
Speaker 2: used in a way that was sophisticated, very sophisticated, and
Speaker 2: kept me coming back to her. You know, she has
Speaker 2: a position and the perspective that is valuable because I
Speaker 2: don't trust my own perspective. That made a really dangerous
Speaker 2: dynamic that I never saw that constantly was looking like,
Speaker 2: this woman is a great guide, a great wisdom, great council,
Speaker 2: great spiritual person, and many many.
Speaker 3: People believed that about her as well.
Speaker 2: And it led to a really you know, dangerous thing,
Speaker 2: like when I got discovered while I was homeless at eighteen,
Speaker 2: and I remember calling her and saying, you wouldn't believe it.
Speaker 2: Labels are coming, and she was like, oh, my darling,
Speaker 2: let me come down and help you. That must be
Speaker 2: really overwhelming. You know, if I could go back one moment,
Speaker 2: you know, and have a do over, it might have
Speaker 2: been like, let's wait on that.
Speaker 3: Let's let me see if I can figure this out.
Speaker 2: Long story short, I woke up at thirty four and
Speaker 2: had to come to terms with the fact that I
Speaker 2: had no money and that my mom wasn't who I.
Speaker 3: Thought she was.
Speaker 1: Jule has said that while she was on the road touring,
Speaker 1: working around the clock, her mother was reaping the benefits
Speaker 1: living a lavish lifestyle with a full staff tending to
Speaker 1: her every whim. In all, Jewel has estimated her mother
Speaker 1: embezzled about one hundred million dollars. How did you cope
Speaker 1: with that betrayal?
Speaker 2: I've had some very powerful moments in my life. Moving
Speaker 2: out at fifteen was powerful. I learned skills that changed
Speaker 2: my life forever. Moving out into my car because I
Speaker 2: wouldn't have sex with a boss, I decided to live
Speaker 2: in my car instead. My car got stolen and so
Speaker 2: I was homeless for a year. That was a powerful moment.
Speaker 2: These are these moments where you either break or you
Speaker 2: go I fucking I have this. I'm going to figure
Speaker 2: this out. And this was another one, this moment of
Speaker 2: I think I was thirty three, thirty four, at whatever
Speaker 2: age I was, this was either going to break me irrevocably,
Speaker 2: or I was going to figure it out. I never
Speaker 2: did therapy. I'm not saying that as a heroic gesture.
Speaker 2: I just didn't have access when I was young, and
Speaker 2: when I was thirty four, I definitely would have had access.
Speaker 2: I had money, but I had been brainwashed. I had
Speaker 2: been so psychologically abused that I didn't want anybody to
Speaker 2: have any access to my mind or my thoughts, or
Speaker 2: have any influence. I needed to figure out how to
Speaker 2: restore my own sense of how to navigate my life.
Speaker 2: And I was taken down to.
Speaker 3: A nub.
Speaker 2: I was dismantled psychologically, and I played a big part
Speaker 2: in it. I kept saying yes, and I kept taking
Speaker 2: apart pieces of myself.
Speaker 3: I participated, and I didn't know what was me and
Speaker 3: what was her.
Speaker 2: And I do know that I actively engaged in tricking myself.
Speaker 2: I do know there was this voice in me yelling
Speaker 2: and kept suppressing it.
Speaker 3: And I get why. I'm not trying to be hard
Speaker 3: on myself.
Speaker 1: I cannot tell you how many times I've heard this
Speaker 1: from survivors, this idea of tricking yourself. How did you
Speaker 1: begin to unwind that and work through that?
Speaker 2: I came out of this with so many tools I'd
Speaker 2: love to talk about. I think the first thing I
Speaker 2: had to come to terms with is the truth wins.
Speaker 2: I willfully tricked myself about my mom. I wanted to
Speaker 2: believe she loved me. I wanted to believe she loved
Speaker 2: me so much. But I did make myself a promise
Speaker 2: that the truth wins, and that I would dedicate myself
Speaker 2: to seeing the truth, no matter how painful it was,
Speaker 2: being willing to see the truth. And that's what I wrote.
Speaker 2: Good by Alice in Wonderland. You know, one of the
Speaker 2: last lines is, these are not tears in my eyes.
Speaker 2: It's me finally learning what's good in my life and
Speaker 2: what isn't. Basically me learning to identify poison for the
Speaker 2: first time in my life, and I correctly identify it.
Speaker 2: So I began to trust my body. My body was
Speaker 2: giving me experiences, and I could talk myself out of
Speaker 2: my body's experience.
Speaker 3: Yes, with my mind.
Speaker 1: You said, you and your dad have a good relationship.
Speaker 1: Now what about you and your mom? What has happened there?
Speaker 1: Because that was a much a different kind of betrayal.
Speaker 2: You know, what happened with my dad was kind of
Speaker 2: just a surprise, mind you. I don't expect him to
Speaker 2: be somebody he's not. I love my dad and I'm
Speaker 2: proud of him, and we are closed. But I don't
Speaker 2: think his and my relationship are probably what dad daughter
Speaker 2: relationships are like. We're two adults that we have a
Speaker 2: lot to offer each other. But you know, my dad
Speaker 2: isn't somebody at call for advice. When I'm hurt, my
Speaker 2: dad isn't somebody at call, and that's okay. So I
Speaker 2: just do kind of want to accept my dad for
Speaker 2: where he's at, and I make sure I get my
Speaker 2: needs met and what my needs are. So I'm not
Speaker 2: looking for my dad to be that guy. You know.
Speaker 2: I accept him where he's at and it's healthy and
Speaker 2: there's nothing harmful about it. Oh, but I'm not coming
Speaker 2: to it from a place of like these wounds, still
Speaker 2: hoping that I get that thing from him. I figure
Speaker 2: out how to get those needs met. And the world
Speaker 2: is full of ways to meet.
Speaker 3: Those needs, and that's the good news.
Speaker 2: So my mom, the last time I saw her was
Speaker 2: two thousand and three. It was in a lawyer's office.
Speaker 2: It's a scene that I describe in the book. She said,
Speaker 2: you know, I'm just so glad that I get to
Speaker 2: go back to just being.
Speaker 3: Your mom now.
Speaker 2: And I knew in that moment when she said that,
Speaker 2: that i'd never see her again, or I didn't think
Speaker 2: I would, and I haven't.
Speaker 3: I haven't seen my mom since that day. She never
Speaker 3: reached out.
Speaker 2: She did write me a letter when I was pregnant
Speaker 2: that said, you know, I'm always here, to forgive you
Speaker 2: whenever you're ready.
Speaker 1: This classic gaslighting and manipulation technique is something I've heard
Speaker 1: from survivors time and again. It offers zero consideration for
Speaker 1: how the letter will affect the emotional well being of
Speaker 1: the recipient, and in this instance, shows us how distorted
Speaker 1: forgiveness can get. People who betray us often twist reality
Speaker 1: to make us think we owe them an apology. Sometimes
Speaker 1: these moments can be used as a tool to confirm
Speaker 1: what we know to be true, as Jewel did, but
Speaker 1: it never stops being flabbergasting and often destabilizing.
Speaker 2: You know, what I did might seem extreme to people.
Speaker 2: There are all kinds of ways to deal with this.
Speaker 2: This is just mine. I always caught my losses, like
Speaker 2: when I felt like it became between death and staying
Speaker 2: with somebody. It took me way too long to leave
Speaker 2: it fully. And my job was just to learn how
Speaker 2: to heal. And it was a real thing to heal
Speaker 2: from the most rebellious thing you can do.
Speaker 1: It is it is figure out how to be happy.
Speaker 1: It is. It is, yeah, And I had.
Speaker 2: My work cutout for me. It was going to take
Speaker 2: all my all, my intellect, all my everything to figure
Speaker 2: out how the hell to recover because I wanted to
Speaker 2: be happy. I wanted to be able to love and
Speaker 2: have trust and resilience, and that was such a monumental
Speaker 2: thing that I didn't have time. Now I did have anger.
Speaker 2: I did so much shaft to work through. But I
Speaker 2: realized one day there was a story called the Allegory
Speaker 2: of the Golden Statue. A village had a golden statue.
Speaker 2: They heard a warring tribe was coming. They quickly covered
Speaker 2: the statue in layers of mud to obscure its value.
Speaker 2: The war came, the war wind there was devastation for generations.
Speaker 2: They didn't even think about the statue. Generations went by.
Speaker 2: There was a child playing at the feet of the
Speaker 2: statue after a rainstorm, and he saw this little chip
Speaker 2: revealing there was pure gold underneath this what people had
Speaker 2: thought was a valueless statue. And for some reason, this
Speaker 2: image struck me. I canceled a tour, I quit everything
Speaker 2: to see how I can I'd heal psychologically from what
Speaker 2: had happened with my mom. I was at a ranch
Speaker 2: in Texas, just figure out what do I do, and
Speaker 2: had this image come back to me, and it suddenly
Speaker 2: hit me, I'm not broken. I just need to do
Speaker 2: a loving archaeological dig back to who I am. I
Speaker 2: had been covered with layers of mud and spit and
Speaker 2: bruises and psychological programming to where I didn't know me
Speaker 2: from other but I was existing purely I believed. I
Speaker 2: choose to believe that I'm not broken. There's not something
Speaker 2: wrong with me, There's something right with me. And I
Speaker 2: had to get in touch with what was right with me.
Speaker 1: That is quite profound. How were you able to do that?
Speaker 2: I looked at that kind of like nature versus nurture.
Speaker 2: My nature was the gold statue, and it existed. I
Speaker 2: had just been obscured through decades of trauma, and so
Speaker 2: I decided to use my body and my experience as
Speaker 2: ruth and to trust it and to not talk myself
Speaker 2: out of my experience with my thoughts. And so that
Speaker 2: led me to realizing that my anxiety isn't my enemy,
Speaker 2: it's my ally. And this was probably one of the
Speaker 2: bigger things that I learned during that time. What if
Speaker 2: my anxiety wasn't this enemy that I needed to suppress
Speaker 2: and talk myself out of and disassociate from. What if
Speaker 2: it was something for me to listen to What made
Speaker 2: me think of it was food poisoning. You know, if
Speaker 2: you eat bad fish, you throw up, and you learn
Speaker 2: don't eat bad fish again.
Speaker 3: You shouldn't get mad at throwing up.
Speaker 2: You should think throwing up because it was your body's
Speaker 2: way of saying you consumed something that made you sick.
Speaker 2: It makes me so tender I tear up. Anxiety was
Speaker 2: my best alarm system, letting me know I was consuming
Speaker 2: something that didn't agree with my nature. And that's how
Speaker 2: I began to deprogram myself. I had thousands of thoughts
Speaker 2: that were false. I had thousands of beliefs that were false.
Speaker 2: I had thousands of guilts and shames and decades of
Speaker 2: stuff that I was trying to figure out how to
Speaker 2: sort through. And I realized my anxiety was my compass.
Speaker 3: In a weird way.
Speaker 2: It's just one point on a compass. But when I
Speaker 2: had a thought and it made me anxious, I would
Speaker 2: stop and I would write down what was I thinking, feeling,
Speaker 2: or doing, and I would just move on. And then
Speaker 2: when I was consumed with more anxiety, I would write
Speaker 2: what was I just thinking, feeling, or doing. And what
Speaker 2: I realized is those were thoughts, feelings, and actions that
Speaker 2: didn't agree with me, and was I willing to stop
Speaker 2: consuming them and see if I became less anxious. And
Speaker 2: so that's one of the first steps I took in
Speaker 2: learning how to deprogram myself, learning how to instill a
Speaker 2: compass in me, learning how to curate my thoughts and
Speaker 2: replace them with thoughts that did agree with me, like
Speaker 2: a soothing medicine. Almost, you know, these are decades. I'm
Speaker 2: talking about it all up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's not something you're going to do in a week.
Speaker 2: But there's an axiom called the wicked teacher, and it
Speaker 2: says you become that which you resent. Yes, And that's
Speaker 2: the most powerful sentence when you look at what your
Speaker 2: choices are. If you've been betrayed, it's a fork in
Speaker 2: the road, you know, But choosing willfully in that one moment, No,
Speaker 2: I'm going to go right. I want to learn how
Speaker 2: to love and trust and heal. And so every time
Speaker 2: I would be consumed with regret, resentment, just say what,
Speaker 2: that's a coping mechanism. It's a it's the left road,
Speaker 2: and I want to take the right road because I
Speaker 2: have enough to do on the right road.
Speaker 3: I have enough to work on.
Speaker 1: Right I think a lot of people out of there
Speaker 1: is a family betrayal that persists. A pattern of behavior
Speaker 1: that persists is people do feel anger. And one thing
Speaker 1: I do let people know is you feel as you feel.
Speaker 1: And the thing you need to trust about feeling is
Speaker 1: to never over identify with feeling. There is no right
Speaker 1: or wrong feeling, to have you have the feeling you have,
Speaker 1: and to never judge how you feel, because that's the
Speaker 1: internalized judgment a person has always carried on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I want to touch on anger because choosing
Speaker 2: to go right doesn't mean you stop being angry.
Speaker 3: It took me decades. I'm sure to process.
Speaker 2: The anger and I will have reserves for life. Probably
Speaker 2: for me, what I learned about anger is right, I
Speaker 2: should have been angry for what happened to me. That's
Speaker 2: a sign of health. Anger is typically a sign of health.
Speaker 2: I think of it like a gunpowder blast. It's quick,
Speaker 2: and it's intense, and it should create a tremendous amount
Speaker 2: of energy in your body to take an action. Yes,
Speaker 2: And so for me it was like, I'm angry, What
Speaker 2: am I going to do with it?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: And by constantly focusing on okay, what am I going
Speaker 2: to do with this anger. My anger lets me know
Speaker 2: that a boundary has been crossed, or that I crossed
Speaker 2: my own boundary, or that I compromised, or that I
Speaker 2: got compromised.
Speaker 3: It's very powerful. It's a good tool.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm very angry at my mom. And then
Speaker 2: you have a choice, you know, will I fester? Right?
Speaker 2: Because hey, many nights did I stay up with circular thoughts? Resenting, angry,
Speaker 2: locked in and it is a poison, and it was
Speaker 2: my own mind. What am I now going to do?
Speaker 2: Now I have a lot of energy my body. I
Speaker 2: would typically spiral in shame. I would lock into regret.
Speaker 2: I would go into self loathing. I would lock into
Speaker 2: just mind boggling resentment for my mom and realizing those
Speaker 2: were all choices I was making, and could I do
Speaker 2: something else with this energy? Could I do something else
Speaker 2: with this anger? And so I do just want to
Speaker 2: highlight that, Yeah, it isn't like this kind of mental
Speaker 2: like I'm just gonna choose not to be angry and forgive.
Speaker 2: It is not like that. It's a dirty business business.
Speaker 2: It is a dirty, gritty business. And that for somebody
Speaker 2: that never knew how to love herself, that never knew
Speaker 2: how to champion myself. It was a process of learning
Speaker 2: that self love was not staying up at night and
Speaker 2: doing that to myself, but saying, okay, but what am
Speaker 2: I going to do tomorrow that builds my life instead
Speaker 2: of tears it down. So I hope that explains that
Speaker 2: whole thing. It can sound like I was so heroic,
Speaker 2: of like I just chose, I chose to go right.
Speaker 3: It isn't like that you.
Speaker 1: Were heroic and you were angry and you chose to
Speaker 1: go right. All of those things are true. Again, the
Speaker 1: multiple truths. I have to say though, that scene with
Speaker 1: your mom, the two thousand and three one in the
Speaker 1: lawyer's office, it was absolutely chilling because here your mother
Speaker 1: has completely financially abused you, financially betrayed you. It hits
Speaker 1: even harder because of where you came from, where there
Speaker 1: wasn't enough. You really struggled financially, your family struggled financially,
Speaker 1: to have all that worked and just passion and everything
Speaker 1: you did for to at least a financial part of
Speaker 1: it to have gone away. Then for your mother to
Speaker 1: pivot and say, I guess I have to go back
Speaker 1: to just being your mother, which is really code for
Speaker 1: I guess that means I'm going to leave again? Was
Speaker 1: I mean it should personally? And shook me to my core.
Speaker 1: My question then becomes, all of this is very complicated
Speaker 1: relationship you had with your mother. How has this impacted
Speaker 1: your process as a mother yourself?
Speaker 2: I love being a mom, so much to say about it.
Speaker 2: I highly recommend doing as much healing as you can
Speaker 2: before having a child, if you have that luxury or
Speaker 2: the option. If you didn't know you had stuff to
Speaker 2: heal from, it's okay. I believe that as I heal
Speaker 2: in front of my child, it's a healing for him. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And I can tell my son it's okay to make mistakes.
Speaker 2: But if I don't think it's okay for me to
Speaker 2: make mistakes, I'm sending a mixed message to my son. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Admitting you still need to heal even as a parent
Speaker 2: is admitting you're going to make mistakes and finding a
Speaker 2: way to hold some grace for yourself and realizing that
Speaker 2: just modeling when I'm make mistakes for my son and I.
Speaker 3: Come clean as it were. Yah that I'm going like,
Speaker 3: you know what, I was really impatient.
Speaker 2: I was so patient. Oh my gosh, I'm impatient. Like
Speaker 2: I think I'm gonna go for a walk. I gotta
Speaker 2: go figure this out. He knows I'm impatient. Why would
Speaker 2: I fool all of us that I'm not obviously not
Speaker 2: over involving him in my process or overly adulting my process,
Speaker 2: but just giving a voice to the truth, showing a
Speaker 2: process of how I handle it that emotions are. My
Speaker 2: son has big feelings, you know, no shocker, He's like
Speaker 2: my kid. What do we do with intense feelings? How
Speaker 2: do we manage them? Sometimes we catch him quick, sometimes
Speaker 2: we don't notice him till a little too late. I
Speaker 2: love healing. I believe I'll be healing for the rest
Speaker 2: of my life. I believe I'll be learning and growing
Speaker 2: the rest of my life. And I hope my son
Speaker 2: has an appetite for that. So it's the only way
Speaker 2: for him to kind of see the messiness as we
Speaker 2: do it. I am glad I healed a ton prior.
Speaker 1: My conversation will continue after this break.
Speaker 2: The other thing I realized is again I kind of
Speaker 2: talk about this nature and nurture, but because the way
Speaker 2: I loved my mom, I took refuge in that in
Speaker 2: a weird way, and it was that to remind myself
Speaker 2: constantly that I knew how to love.
Speaker 3: Yes, it was intact.
Speaker 2: And I had to really trust that and not see
Speaker 2: that as a negative with my son, but to embrace
Speaker 2: that I was intact. I knew how to love, and
Speaker 2: I could trust that nature in me. You know, having
Speaker 2: a newborn is very scary. You don't innately know how
Speaker 2: to breastfeed. It's not as intuitive as you all think.
Speaker 2: So it kind of threw me and it was very dumb.
Speaker 2: I watched somehow a panda with a baby, and I
Speaker 2: was like, I have this in me. I have to
Speaker 2: trust I have this in me, even though I wasn't nurtured.
Speaker 2: I have to trust in my bones this ability to
Speaker 2: navigate this and keep and I had to have faith
Speaker 2: in that, and I had to keep fighting my way
Speaker 2: back to that love.
Speaker 3: And it's worked out well.
Speaker 1: It has worked out. And not only have you done
Speaker 1: that for your son, you're doing it for the world.
Speaker 1: And so I really want you to talk about your platform,
Speaker 1: Inner World, because it's an amazing resource. I know it's
Speaker 1: going to help so many people, Jules, So can you
Speaker 1: explain what it is?
Speaker 3: Thank You?
Speaker 2: In Our World is a mental health platform that's virtual
Speaker 2: so you can use your iPad or your iPhone. You
Speaker 2: can even use like VR goggles if you want, and
Speaker 2: you come into a virtual community where it.
Speaker 3: Is completely safe.
Speaker 2: There are no trolls, there is no bullying, there is
Speaker 2: incredible moderation, and you can participate in a community where
Speaker 2: people are just hanging around like a campfire or these
Speaker 2: really logically calm settings and just find connection, which have
Speaker 2: tremendous network effects, right it helps. Connection alone is wildly curative.
Speaker 2: Or you can actually attend classes in a peer to
Speaker 2: peer setting that are led by guides that are trained
Speaker 2: nice and we have over one hundred classes a week.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: Groups, Yeah, are already like we really scaled up the classes.
Speaker 2: They're specific around living with anxiety, living with chronic illness,
Speaker 2: living with depression, being a support person for somebody with
Speaker 2: an illness, living with agoraphobia, or you know, extreme social anxiety.
Speaker 2: You'll find, you know a lot of people even go
Speaker 2: to classes they don't think they need, just because you
Speaker 2: learn so much. It's all based on behavioral tools. So
Speaker 2: these are not therapists, these are not PhDs. These are
Speaker 2: lay people that have been trained to lead classes. There
Speaker 2: is a ton still of oversight and moderation. If you
Speaker 2: know somebody is for some reason having an acute trigger
Speaker 2: and having acute suicide ideation, were not equipped for that,
Speaker 2: and so they can be removed to a private room
Speaker 2: and then helped, because that's not what our platform is.
Speaker 3: But you'll learn tools.
Speaker 2: So let's say you go to a social anxiety meeting
Speaker 2: you don't like going out. We had a woman that
Speaker 2: hadn't left home in four years. She was in weekly therapy,
Speaker 2: and we taught her a tool it's called solving ahead.
Speaker 2: You write down what you want to do. She wanted
Speaker 2: to go to the grocery store. You say, what's the
Speaker 2: worst case scenario? She wrote out her worst case scenario.
Speaker 2: What's your plan? I will call this person. I'm going
Speaker 2: to take my phone with me so I can stay
Speaker 2: on inner world is what she wanted. She had that
Speaker 2: support system live. And then now let's say, what's the
Speaker 2: best case scenario. Not that we get to control the outcome,
Speaker 2: but how could we influence it where maybe the best
Speaker 2: case scenario happens. What's your plan to kind of help
Speaker 2: influences to hopefully have a good outcome. And then what's
Speaker 2: the most likely case scenario? It's usually somewhere in the middle,
Speaker 2: and then armed with that, people learn this behavioral tool.
Speaker 2: And I think in four months of our platform, she
Speaker 2: went out not only the grocery shop, but she ended
Speaker 2: up going to a concert.
Speaker 3: With Biplos's fantastic.
Speaker 2: And her therapist started coming into our settings because she
Speaker 2: was like, oh my gosh, like how did my client?
Speaker 3: What tool was that? So that's what we do. You
Speaker 3: sign up.
Speaker 2: It's a free platform but has a premium subscription, so
Speaker 2: more access to more meetings and more supports is as
Speaker 2: little as eight dollars a month. We wanted access for all.
Speaker 2: We wanted this highly affordable because to me, the idea
Speaker 2: that people don't have access to these tools is unforgivable
Speaker 2: and we need to make them very readily available.
Speaker 1: Well, I think it's an amazing resource. It is you
Speaker 1: also infusing what your process has been, like you said,
Speaker 1: so so complicated, but always plugged into healing, that no
Speaker 1: matter what our backstories are, we're not defined by them,
Speaker 1: and if anything, they can really foster resilience. You talk
Speaker 1: about this idea that just because something bends doesn't mean
Speaker 1: that it breaks, and you're really a living monument to
Speaker 1: that idea that we can bend without breaking, even though
Speaker 1: we don't believe that. I'm so glad I had the
Speaker 1: opportunity to talk to you and get to know you
Speaker 1: and learn your story because I think it and I
Speaker 1: know it informed what I share with survivors of really
Speaker 1: difficult historical intergenerational cycles and stories and their families, and
Speaker 1: how to understand that you can always find your autonomy,
Speaker 1: your sense of who you are, and go and actually
Speaker 1: live into that full sense of you, but that there's
Speaker 1: going to always be some echoes of it. Like you said,
Speaker 1: some our wounds can cause us to be a puppet.
Speaker 1: What you showed us is that the marionette strings can
Speaker 1: be cut and that we can move forward. But it
Speaker 1: is a journey. And so again we're not only blessed
Speaker 1: with your music and the world, Jewle, I can say
Speaker 1: even more so now with your journey and your commitment
Speaker 1: to healing not just for yourself but for everyone in
Speaker 1: the world. So thank you, so much, Thank.
Speaker 2: You so much, Thanks for what you do and giving
Speaker 2: a thoughtful place to yeah discuss really complicated.
Speaker 3: Very nuanced, very difficult things.
Speaker 2: And again I would just emphasize, like it's not always
Speaker 2: black and white, it's a world of grace, And for me,
Speaker 2: my healing has been about what can I do? What
Speaker 2: can I do better today? Do I want to be happy?
Speaker 2: Am I going to be accountable for it? And if
Speaker 2: you are willing to do that, you know. I always
Speaker 2: tell people they're like, healing is so hard and it's
Speaker 2: so painful, and.
Speaker 3: It is, it is real work.
Speaker 2: But being dysfunctional is very painful and a lot of work.
Speaker 2: It's just familiar and there's no light at the end
Speaker 2: of that tunnel. So learning a new way, learning a
Speaker 2: new habit, learning a new way to think is so
Speaker 2: painful and hard. But at least there is a light
Speaker 2: potentially at the end of that tunnel. So why not
Speaker 2: take that? Ben?
Speaker 1: I love it again. Thank you, thank you, thank you
Speaker 1: so much. Here are my takeaways from my conversation with Jewel. First,
Speaker 1: she talks about this idea of emotional inheritance and emotional language.
Speaker 1: When we think about inheritance and genetics of our psychology,
Speaker 1: we often think about psychological vulnerabilities or genetic vulnerabilities for
Speaker 1: mental illness, but this is something very different and very
Speaker 1: important for survivors. We learn to speak emotion the way
Speaker 1: we observe and are taught in childhood. We may have
Speaker 1: permission to express a range of emotion, or we may
Speaker 1: be taught to use displacing emotional language, or we may
Speaker 1: find ourselves completely silenced emotionally. Rage may be a frequently
Speaker 1: accessed to emotion, and sadness may be shamed. Growth and
Speaker 1: evolution past the limited emotional languages we are given in
Speaker 1: childhood often requires major work and shifts, especially for people
Speaker 1: whose emotional vocabularies were limited. Our emotional inheritances are intergenerational
Speaker 1: and reflect the traumas, losses, joys, and grief of generations past,
Speaker 1: and become the foundation of our emotional languages. In our
Speaker 1: next takeaway, Jewel said that changed behavior is what earns
Speaker 1: back relationships. So many people in invalidating relationships are waiting
Speaker 1: for the I am sorry that rarely comes, and that
Speaker 1: when it does come, folks may go all in again.
Speaker 1: But what Jewel shares here is actually a fundamental truth
Speaker 1: to hold onto in a narcissistic relationship as well. Even
Speaker 1: if you do get an apology, it's not enough. There
Speaker 1: must be behavior change, sustained and accountable behavior change any less,
Speaker 1: and we can all but guarantee that the old patterns
Speaker 1: are going to return again for our next takeaway. While
Speaker 1: Jewel did endure multiple hardships and losses in childhood, that
Speaker 1: one of the worst was the theft of her inner
Speaker 1: compass through being gaslighted by both of her parents, and
Speaker 1: she highlights a particular situation when she connected the dots
Speaker 1: quite accurately and was told she was patently wrong. The
Speaker 1: loss of that compass means we are navigating without a
Speaker 1: compass as we emerge into adulthood and can leave us
Speaker 1: doubting our intuition and our perceptions. In this next takeaway,
Speaker 1: Jewel brought up an off sided line hurt people hurt people, Yes,
Speaker 1: they do, But Jewel's follow up line is key, hurt people,
Speaker 1: hurt people, but it's not okay to hurt me. The
Speaker 1: hurt people's spin often ends up feeling like a justification
Speaker 1: or an excuse, and while we can hold empathy for
Speaker 1: folks who have been hurt, it is not a free
Speaker 1: pass to keep hurting. But sadly many people can view
Speaker 1: it that way. Or this next takeaway, she shared two
Speaker 1: key tools that were instrumental in her healing, being willing
Speaker 1: to see the truth and identify poison and to listen
Speaker 1: to her anxiety. She viewed anxiety as a signal, which
Speaker 1: is an astute observation. Our anxiety can teach us about
Speaker 1: ourselves and how to take care of ourselves. However, that
Speaker 1: process of being willing to see the truth that takes
Speaker 1: a while. It is about pulling out of the shadow
Speaker 1: of trauma, bonding and enablers and see it. And to
Speaker 1: see the truth can also be a lonely place because
Speaker 1: most people don't. And in our last takeaway, Jewel calls
Speaker 1: healing rebellion and that could not be more true. The invalidating, confusing, toxic,
Speaker 1: or narcissistic relationships can only persist if we do not heal,
Speaker 1: and when we start healing, these were relationships also change.
Speaker 1: Healing is not an overnight, dramatic experience. It is thousands
Speaker 1: of micro changes that bring you closer to your sense
Speaker 1: of self and when you do that, you change the rules,
Speaker 1: the structure of these relationships and the entire system. You
Speaker 1: probably never thought of yourself as a rebel, but each
Speaker 1: time you disengage or don't take the bait, that is
Speaker 1: exactly what you are