Jewel kilcher family biography children

In a candid interview, the singer and activist opens up about healing from an abusive childhood and painful divorce through motherhood and mental health advocacy. Growing up Jewel felt unworthy of love. And as she made her way into adulthood, the '90s folk icon born Jewel Kilcher had deep scars that she didn't dare uncover — especially for herself to see.

Each day was a challenge as she battled her way through a fog of physical and emotional abuse.

Jewel kilcher mother

No one had taught the four-time Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter, now 49, to address her childhood trauma, and as she found success in the music industry, she struggled to untangle her past from her present. Who wants that? When the singer was 8, her mother, Lenedra Carroll, left the family, and Jewel and her two brothers were raised by their father Atz Kilcher a star on Discovery's Alaska: The Last Frontier on their acre ranch in Homer, Alaska.

But everything changed when my mom left. My dad started drinking and being physically abusive, so like hitting us, and that's what caused me to move out," says the star, who previously detailed her father's abuse in her memoir. Outside of her family home, she also faced sexual harassment from a young age. At 8 years old, she would have men tell her, "Call me when you're You're going to be a great f," she recalls.

Another time, a man slammed her against a wall after her performance at a local bar when she was 12, demanding to know if she had "cheated" on him, she says.

Where does jewel live now

After years of mistreatment she was no longer willing to put up with Atz's abuse, and Jewel — who opened up to PEOPLE in about reconciling with her father , a Vietnam veteran who developed PTSD, after he got sober in his 60s — moved off her family's homestead and into her own cabin at 15, when she began shoplifting to survive. Then in she moved to San Diego, where she worked at a computer warehouse to pay the bills while pursuing her music career.

Her boss fired her after she turned down his advances, and she was left broke and homeless after her car was stolen. But there's still violence," recalls Jewel, who suffered from anxiety and panic attacks, kidney problems and agoraphobia an intense fear of leaving the house alone or of being in crowded places.