by Jewel
• • •
MY STORYBOOK ENDING isn’t one written in Hollywood. I didn’t get to ride off into the sunset with a cowboy. But I do get to ride off into the sunset with my son, myself intact, full of optimism for what I might experience and accomplish in my future and for what I will be able to teach my son. My innocence is not lost—it has been converted into wisdom.
The sensation we call “breaking” is the pain that comes from resisting truth. Life broke parts of me that needed to fall away for me to live an open and truthful life. But the only things that broke away were the things that did not serve me anymore. Life demanded that I get rid of my ego, my facade, my contrived safety nets, until I was reduced to my true nature, so it could shine unhindered. I needed to know great darkness to know my light. I needed to understand extreme constraint to know my freedom. I needed to face shame to know my own worth.
When angered I ask myself, “If I removed my anger or hurt from this situation and acted out of love and unity—if I acted from my highest self—what would I do now?” Hatred is hurt masquerading—it is an energy used to fool someone into thinking they are frightening when in truth they are frightened. It is used to defend a wound, and when we see it, we can see it is a neon sign advertising not the strength it boasts but pointing directly to a wound.
It’s important to recognize when we feel hurt. Brendon Burchard, author of The Motivation Manifesto, says, “Integrity is learning to feel hurt but not integrate its darkness into our soul or cast it into another.” Doing this for me means sitting with the hurt until I can transmute it into self-love. He also writes, “When loyalty is chosen over truth, corruption is near.” When the need for someone else’s love or approval outweighs one’s own, self-betrayal is near. The world offers many opportunities to be small—it is our discipline and actions that lead to character and help us stand tall when faced with the temptation of being reactionary rather than self-empowered.
Love is the spring eternal. It is the healer of all wounds. It can be administered by yourself to yourself and be most effective. We do not need to wait for permission to be granted love and no one can deny us love. When we are in the eternal flowing river of love, our hurt feels small and can be washed away. We can experience the generosity and abundance we all inherit. Do not drown in hurt when you can swim in a sea of love. Pain is a thorn of truth waiting to be witnessed and then released. The spirit can no more hold on to pain than a branch the wind. Let it pass through you and then turn your mind once again to the bounty of love that exists exquisitely for us at all times. We can never be separate from love except in our forgetfulness.
I have been hurt but I am not hurt personified.
I have felt betrayed but I am not betraying.
I have simplified all feelings into two categories: one that expresses love and one that doesn’t. The one that doesn’t betrays my belief in and love for myself. Pettiness shows me I do not believe I can provide for myself. Jealousy shows I don’t believe I am enough. Greed shows I feel I have to cheat and that I can’t come by abundance honestly. Obsession is a lack of ability to release and feel the generosity love provides. It is never about the other person. It is always about my faith, love, and belief in myself and I look at the clues of self-hatred as miraculous teachers—I thank them for showing me the places I still need healing. I look for them with excitement. I welcome them in and ask them to come closer. All of me is welcome here, I say, even the imperfect parts. They hold the key to my growth. I thank them and I eagerly give them a seat at the table so I may know them better. These parts of us will not show up if we hold a hammer in our hands, if we beat ourselves up the second an imperfection rears its head. Next time you feel small say, Ah, there you are friend! Tell me about yourself! Where did you come from? The next time you feel jealous say, Hello! What part of you feels you alone are not enough? I am here to tell you that you are, and to bless that person and let it go and transmute the energy of jealousy for someone else into love for yourself, where it may serve you better. If we feel shame, be most tender, most kind. Say, come into the light so I might see you better—what, dear friend, makes you think you are somehow separate from love? What illusion are you suffering under? You are love! Always! Give me your worst secret and I will still show you a human deserving of kindness and together we can do better in our actions once we operate from a belief in our goodness rather than of our shame and unworthiness.
I love you and I want to see and know all of you, even the worst parts—especially those. All of you gets to be here, seen and loved.
It is a great fallacy to operate under the illusion that there is not enough love and so we must hoard, hang on, or somehow administer it like a limited resource. Giving love is not about the worthiness of the receiver. It’s about the truth you wish to live by. Love knows not how you deem another worthy or not—it is not even yours to declare such things. It is impossible, in fact, and to deny another because you deem them unworthy is simply starving your own soul and creating a smallness inside you. It does not punish another to deny them love—it punishes you. Stop this self-abuse. Once and for all declare there is enough and that you will let love flow through you rather than cut your own self off from the source. If another is hurtful, give them the love that they so desperately thirst for, not knowing how to ask. Keep yourself safe, and create a distance if needed, but in your mind do not let smallness or obsessive or hurtful thoughts consume you. Give them love and flow on with your life.
There is love for us that exists at all times if we will but open ourselves to feel it. No one can deny us of it any more than they can deny us air to breathe or our thoughts to think. When we move away from love we become shells walking through a life that should be rich and fertile. I choose love. I choose an open heart.
Mercy
Simplicity does not come easy
When you’re dreaming of being someone else
And grace you see is fleeting
When you’re bleeding your inner self
Give mercy to me please
Have mercy I’m on my knees
I’m being broken again and again
I’ll keep being broken until I remain
Open
When you’re locked away, fighting shadows
A contstant battle trying to feel safe
When your armor starts killing you
’Cause it’s causing you to sink beneath its weight
Call for mercy, won’t you please
Call for mercy, drop to your knees
You’re being broken, again and again
You’ll keep being broken, till you remain
Open
Feel the pain, give in to it
Cry till you crack, that’s how the light gets in
Set your weapons on the ground
Until you’re naked and trembling now
And when you think you can’t stand anymore
Give mercy, to someone in need
Give mercy, don’t you see
Life will break our hearts again and again
And we’ll keep being broken until we remain
Open
Don’t you see, don’t you see
Life will break your heart again and again
Lest you let yourself be broken until open
Let yourself be broken until open
I have broken
I am open
epilogue
July 2015. Greetings from Telluride. The weather is glorious. I hiked the Jud Wiebe Trail this morning and then sat in a café working on my book and album.
Kase is with Ty today, and I have enjoyed these rare luxurious hours of doing nothing but turning inward with no definition beating me to the draw. In this moment I am not mother, nor child, nor musician. I am the culmination of a million variances of light that swirl in here, within this flesh cathedral. This is my I am.
I
am looking deep inside—not daughter, writer, nor woman, even. I am merely dancing inside here, enjoying the view from behind my eyes . . .
I’d like to share one of my earliest memories. I was at the bottom of the stairs in the unfinished basement of a home my parents were building in Anchorage. I was very small, because I remember holding on to the bottom stair for balance. I was down there by myself, looking up the dimly lit stairs, at the bright square of light that shown through the open door, the dark silhouette of my mother standing there, like a cookie cutter of a woman’s form—long skirt, hair flipping just so at the shoulder.
She was calling, “Jewel . . . Jewel . . . are you down there? Jewel?”
In that moment, I was being entertained by the most vibrant frenzy of colors swirling inside myself. I had a sense of great space inside me, a living, breathing darkness lit by these colors, almost like living stained glass shining within the walls of a great cathedral. Like curtains of northern lights shimmering and undulating in this vast space within myself.
“Jewel.” My mother’s voice came calling again. I looked from behind my eyes and up at her long shadow, unfolding like an accordion across the geometric zig and zag of the stairs. I knew that was my mother’s voice—but her voice was not her. I knew that was my mother’s shadow, but that shadow was not her. I heard the echo of her voice bounce against the wall.
“Jewel, how did you get down here?” she said, her eyes seeing me now, but her eyes were not her. Just like my body was no more me than the echo of her voice was her.
I looked inside myself, at the colors dancing. I remember thinking, Am I Jewel? I remember consciously connecting my name to the colors. I was the colors. For years I would have these strange experiences, aware of myself, alive in here, like the operator of a magnificent machine that was growing miraculously around me.
Another vivid memory like this was during a play at our church. I was sitting on the hard bench with my mother, father, and younger brother. My older brother was in a play with other nine-year-olds. Every child onstage was nine. To distinguish roles, they dressed the part. The nine-year-old boss wore a tie and suit and sat behind a cardboard desk they had made. The nine-year-old mom wore a dress and a wig and comforted a nine-year-old baby who sucked on a pacifier and wore comical diapers. Other nine-year-olds “drove” to work, walking behind a cardboard cutout of a car window. I was so stricken by the moment I almost became ill. I looked over at my mother and father, and all I could think was, We are all playing roles. We were all the same, deciding who we were and playing dress up and playing our roles. I suddenly could see no difference between any of us, and I became so frightened that it was like all the life had been sucked out of life. We left the church and drove in our car (it was much more clever than a cardboard one, but it felt just as silly all of a sudden, just as self-made and unreal) and went to see my brother play soccer. I remember all the kids running across the field, and the bright sun of the summer day, but it felt like none of it was real. We were all in the same play, pretending.
It took me a long time to make peace with this one. In time I found it creative, even, in its truth. We are playing roles.
And here I am again. I am forty-one. My feet quit growing farther from my face quite a while ago, but my body continues its wise evolution, and I am awake in here. Like Plato’s theory of forms and the allegory of the cave, we witness shadows cast on the wall and strive to know the shadows are not reality, and that like those prisoners chained within the walls of the cave, we are constantly tasked to know reality beyond the shadows cast forth upon our world. Plato’s Phaedo contains similar imagery to the allegory of the cave; a philosopher recognizes that before philosophy (what I call self-reflection), his soul was “a veritable prisoner fast bound within his body . . . and that instead of investigating reality by itself and in itself it is compelled to peer through the bars of its prison.” Descartes said, “I think, therefore I am.” But for me perhaps it is more accurately described as “I perceive what I think, therefore I am.” If I am able to witness my thoughts, I am not my thoughts. I am something other. And this Otherness is far wiser than my mind or my experience. It has a greater sense of intelligence and is the voice that speaks to me in my quiet moments when my mind is still. It has been with me since I was a child and remained even when I turned my ear away. It is in each of us.
This has been a long and imperfect journey. It is a journey I am still on. I will always be on. And it is one I would like to share with you. I want company along my road. This is an invitation to question your life and, should you desire, to find the courage to erase the lines that imprison you and to reimagine a better you. And if you do not get it just right (none of us do), you are invited to keep redrawing and redrawing until you feel your outer world matches your inner life.
If falling short of our goals is truly what terrifies us, then we should do away with half measures. The notion that dipping a toe in the water somehow protects us is nothing short of fear propagation—and in fact guarantees the hurt we fear. Be bold. Name what you want. Give it voice and then give it action. Success is not guaranteed but commitment and courage are the only insurance we have.
This is serious. Every day that passes is another day closer to looking back on your life and seeing whether you have done something meaningful. Don’t let the days pass without doing something great. Be the architect of your dreams.
WHOLE HUMAN
part of me dies
while part of me comes alive
both equally slow
an eclipse of self
in same body
one going
one coming
and me in here
somehow
watching the self I built
all these years
deconstruct
while at once
I build a new self
grim reaper
and creator
I am in the dark
it seems
the certainty of my old life
gone
my old beliefs
conspicuously absent
my old loved ones
starkly missing
but it is not just darkness
I am in
it is potent in here
womblike
my ears ring
dark matter making crystalline sounds
as if in outer space
I drift lost
but not lost
watching the ego I had built shatter
drift away
grief filling every cell
as I mourn the loss of her
tears bending what light
finds its way to me
but in the lunar distance
I see a horizon
faint as a fingerprint
quiet as a sigh not yet exhaled
I see the blueprint
the seed
being sown
of my new self
and I like her
at once I grieve and rejoice
as I give body to this seed
as I lend flesh and bone and belief
to rebuild myself
this rebirth is painful
as all birth is
true creation is not all zen
once an idea is dreamed the wrestling
must begin of embodying it
drawing it out of spirit
and into the physical world
artist:
part dreamer
part sculptor
part executioner
things must be carved away
to create the shape that resonates
and expresses outwardly
the inward dream
and
I don’t want to be
just
an artist
of art
I want to be an artist
of self
and so the emptiness I bear
to create song and poem
is turned on myself
and the art becomes
not just song
not just life
but me
most importantly
the art
is me
I could no longer sit
like a counterfeit
in the shape a child dreamed
simply from fear
I dream a new dream
I dream it well, sometimes
sometimes it is clumsy
I am learning but
I see it
and I am willing to walk
through the fire
of creation
to embody it
but such sadness
comes in waves
as I grieve the girl
I lovingly built
as I say goodbye
kiss her forehead
smooth and shining
kiss her armor
a little dinged-up
a little war-torn
kiss her mouth
half starved most of her life
and I thank her
from the bottom of my soul
thank you thank you thank you
girl for carrying me all this way
(such a distance!)
through shit and muck
and spittle and
and for being brave enough
and soft enough during it