“I had bad kidneys and really couldn’t afford medication and I kept getting sick and I kept missing work and I kept getting fired from new jobs. I really was never able to get back on my feet and it was during this time that I had a very brief career with shoplifting. It was food mostly and I justified it because of that although one day it looked as though it could escalate. I was walking down the street and I saw a sundress in a store front window and I coveted it. I went in there and tried it on and thought about stealing it. I had the price tag in my hand and it was one of those moments in my life, like a lightening bolt struck me, it was $39.99 and I thought “when did I lose faith in myself? When did I start thinking that I can’t earn $40 for myself?” I was suddenly so insulted and realized I wasn’t cheating anybody except myself. I left, I didn’t steal the dress, I quit shoplifting at that moment and started writing these lyrics, “If you watch what your hands are doing, you can see where your life is going to go.” Whether they’re stealing or writing things are probably going to be two very different futures. So I wrote this song about that and my hands.”Jewel (190)

“I wrote it when I was homeless [age 18 – Ed] so this song was really my way of learning how to turn my life around one thought at a time and find hope through believing in myself instead of thinking I was a victim.”Jewel (1134)

“[Jewel was brought up by her father after her mother left. She was reunited with her mother early in her singing career and her mother became her manager, eventually stealing money from her and leaving Jewell with massive debt. Asked what she learnt from that…- Ed]. I learned that my need to see love was more important to me than my need to see the truth. That was a big lesson, a hard lesson to learn. I wrote this song about it, about me dreaming and pretending.”Jewel (1134)

“[Jewel’s father is Atz Kilcher from the reality TV show, Alaska The Last Frontier – Ed]. My dad and I had a troubled past but he changed, he healed. I forgave my dad the day I left home because forgiveness is so important. Carrying anger and resentment is like burning your own house down to get rid of rats, it just harms yourself and I didn’t want to harm myself anymore. But it doesn’t mean you get a relationship back. Even my dad saying, “I’m sorry,” it meant a lot but it didn’t mean we got our relationship back. It was through changed behavior that my dad and I earned a relationship back – on both our parts. As an adult I was able to see the tremendous amount of pressure he was under. He was an abused child that went to Vietnam, that had a tremendous amount of PTSD, his wife left him with three children and he did what he was programmed to do. I have a tremendous amount of empathy for that. It doesn’t make it fun as a child but I have a tremendous amount of empathy for it. And the fact he was able to change and that I was able to see the sacrifices he was able to make to take us and the courage it took for him to even make it through a day with the amount of anxiety he had. I wrote that song as a thank-you to my grandmother and father for the sacrifices they made and to the beautiful inheritance that I got in music and in song and nature.”Jewel (1134)

“It’s really about seeing pop culture for the first time, seeing hero worship – that we expected other people to save us, but we didn’t expect ourselves to be accountable.”Jewel (1134)