I will rave forever about singer-songwriter Jewel’s new book Never Broken because it stands alone in a genre I call humanitarian literature. Her dignity and compassion are rooted in the trauma she experienced as a young kid. I told the audience in an acceptance speech for a volunteer of the year award that if I could turn my pain into a thing of beauty for other people I will have done my job.
Alas: Jewel has done this brilliantly, and there’s no comparison. We are both artists and authors. I can sketch and paint yet I can’t carry a tune. If I started to sing I might kill cockroaches. That might be a good thing depending on where you live.
Elsewhere:
The Lost Gospel of Thomas verse 70 tells us: “If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.”
I referenced this in my own words in Left of the Dial in a scene where I returned home after a failed drug holiday. My own words alongside this quote were: “What you resist persists.”
Jewel in her bright and luminous memoir Never Broken: Songs are Only Half the Story lists under her principle: Let go of shame: “We cannot change what we are unwilling to bring into the light of day.”
Everyone on earth is born with gifts to use to better ourselves and others in the world. I have said this so often I must sound like a broken record. Failing to use our gifts and keeping them buried is the greatest loss of all: a loss to ourselves and our ability to have a better life; a loss to humanity that will not ever experience the best we have to give.
Jewel was born beautiful outside yet on the inside where it counts she has reached into a gorgeous milieu of resilience and strength and courage to give us the most inspirational story.
Hope=healing. And Jewel’s book offers hope to all of us who struggle with a challenge.
Left of the Dial 