Never Broken: Songs Are Only Half the Story (34 page)

I called this exercise “self and other.” Thoughts that stemmed from me had a distinctly calming feeling, a warmth and a soothing effect. Thoughts and fears that stemmed from programming had a completely separate feel—anxious, metallic, colder. They left me feeling tense and frightened. When I felt triggered—if something made me suddenly highly emotional—I used the phrase
if it’s hysterical, it’s historical
as a rule of thumb, to acknowledge that whatever was affecting me in the present was probably reminding me of something more damaging from my past. I learned to go off by myself, sit, close my eyes, and focus inward. I would breathe into my body and ask what had set me off. Something angered me once, and someone who was with me said, “Don’t be angry, it will just make you sick.” For most people this is a kind and caring thing to say. For me it triggered memories of never feeling allowed to express anger or any emotion contrary to my mom’s needs and wishes. There was still a part of me that believed it and a part of me that became incensed when I heard those words, and neither reaction actually had anything to
do with the person in front of me or the current situation. The disconnect between my fear and emotion and the conversational stimulus was my first clue that a “hysterical” reaction was “historical.” It took me a minute to calm down enough to access my own thoughts and ask myself whether this was my self or other. I could not come up with an answer until I asked myself specifically, “Do you think feelings like anger can make you sick?” Suddenly I said aloud, “I think stress is harmful, and has negative effects on your health. I think our thoughts affect us. But I think expressing anger and darker feelings allows the energy to move out of your body, and that is better than holding them in and denying them.” This sounded more like me!

I noticed while examining my thoughts and reclaiming my beliefs that there was a grain of truth in things my mom told me. She appealed to a part of me that was altruistic and ideal, playing to my genuine nature and then slowly using my own strengths against me, to the point where I was not allowed to take even the smallest pride or pleasure in what I built, nor to feel entitled to the fruits of my own hard work. My mom is not all good or all bad. Like each of us she is comprised of a million variances of gray. I don’t think she set out to ruin me, or us. She is not Evil. I believe she was doing what she felt was in accordance to a higher calling she believed in and that, in her mind, justified the means.

how our natural gifts get exploited

I can handle anything
was another natural gift that had served me well many times in my life but that started working against me. I could handle a lot. But at what point was I allowed to say it’s not about how much I can handle—it’s about whether I should be handling it? So much of my
self-worth was tied to the belief that I could handle anything that I never stopped to wonder—should I? I just felt like a good dog when someone piled more on for me to deal with. If they patted me on the head, I did anything gladly. It took learning to love myself on a whole new level to let go of this as a source of self-worth and to say, If you were loved, you would not be asked to do this, no matter how capable you are.

Another natural gift I had was an inclination toward philosophical thinking—the concept that our thoughts form our reality and thus our lives, and health. This idea was perverted for me at a young age and made me solely responsible for every time I got sick (and eventually for any bad thing that might ever happen to me), and closed my mind from wondering whether it was just a physiological problem with my kidneys. I began to let go of the notion that I alone was responsible for
it all
. I learned to take a truth I came by naturally or when I was young and to update it to complement who and what I was—expanding on philosophy with real experience and knowledge from where I stood now.

Reality is dualistic by nature, because there is the subject we look at and the person looking at the subject. Before we can decide how to interpret reality we must first make sure we are seeing reality. Really seeing it. Not fooling ourselves. Not letting wishes or wants or wounds become the filter through which we perceive reality. If we can give up the myth that we can control facts and truth, thus distorting them through our willfulness and need, then we can use our mind and spirit to
choose
what we do with those facts and how we continue to experience them. We must practice seeing with clear eyes before we can exercise our power to effect meaningful change.

innocence is not lost—it is traded for wisdom

Betrayal converts our innocence to wisdom if we can let go of pain, bitterness, and fear and create enough self-love and safety for ourselves to allow it to do so. I kept my original feelings and built on them until I was rid of the part that did not belong to me.

The truth was I could never make my mom love me or be tender toward me without giving her something in return. No amount of wishful thinking or good deed or compliance would change that. I had tried for years not to see that truth and to will a different reality. It was a myth and I had to face that now. But how I allowed her treatment to affect me, how I allowed her betrayal to affect me, was up to me. That was the only power I had.

•   •   •

I
WENT THROUGH SEVERAL PHASES
that helped me confront my feelings of betrayal and discovered that each of them had to be experienced fully in order to heal. I learned to see them as distinct stages in reading psychotherapist Melanie Brown Kroon’s valuable insights on aplacetoheal.com.

Shock
, which comes in many forms. It can cause an urge to run (flight) or an incapacity to move (fright). It can feel like numbness or chaos. Your mind swirls in anger, disbelief, humiliation, sadness, as it tries to grapple with an old reality being shattered by a new one. In a crisis it is so important to talk about it, if you can, to help understand your feelings and lessen the impact. I wish I had found a support group, a twelve-step program like Al-Anon or one specifically for those who had been in a
situation like mine. I want to tell anyone who feels isolated and alone that you are not going through something that no one has ever gone through. You are not alone. Reach out to support groups if you don’t have friends. Don’t let shame keep you from finding connection and healing. After being isolated for so long, I had to work hard at finding friends who loved me and were a safe place to turn to when I needed help. I was terrified to be seen as less than perfect or to be myself, especially if I sensed it was not what people needed me to be. Twelve years later I have three friends who hold a place for me in their hearts and who remind me of my worth in moments I can’t feel it for myself. I consider myself rich for their love and friendship.

Grieving
the loss of a person whom I loved. I had to see my mom for who she was and let her go. I had to accept that missing having a mom was less painful than having the one I had in my life. No one will ever replace what she should have been, but I’m okay with that. I know now I am strong enough to love myself enough for the both of us on those inevitable days I wish I had a soft shoulder or a warm place to land.

Grieving the loss of the person I thought I knew.
This step is unique to betrayal. I was in a relationship with a person who did not actually exist. I had to grieve the loss of the person I thought I knew first. There are lots of questions in this phase: Why? Why did it happen? Why me? Why did they do this to me? A need to understand it and how you could have been so wrong is very painful. It’s hard not to let your self-esteem become wrapped up in the equation. You must remember betrayal is not about you—it’s about the other person. It’s a crime to let their betrayal cause you to doubt your own goodness and worth. Piercing the veil of this fantasy, and grieving for its loss, was the impetus for my next album,
Goodbye Alice in Wonderland
. We trade in fantasy, it is a currency, and I wanted nothing to do with it anymore. I wanted truth. The title track
distinguishes between dreaming as a positive act that helps us create and envision a new world for ourselves versus dreaming as a tool we use to fool ourselves about the truth.

Forgiving
the person who betrayed me. People often confuse forgiveness with condonation. Forgiving someone doesn’t mean you condone or approve of what they did. Forgiveness is not for the other person at all. It has nothing to do with whether they deserve it or not. Forgiveness is an act of self-love. The best revenge really is a life well lived. While fantasizing about all kinds of revenge was fun for a while, I realized it would only perpetuate what I wanted to be free of, and it would keep me from healing. My advice to anyone struggling with betrayal is don’t let yourself be abused twice. First by the act committed against you, and second by believing it has ruined your ability to experience happiness, trust, or love. Forgive someone who has hurt you so they may receive that gift, and more important because you know it is the scissor that cuts the cord that binds you together. Remember that betrayal doesn’t happen
to
you so much as it happens
by
someone else. Forgiveness allows you to release anger. Carrying anger with you is like lighting your own house on fire to get rid of rats. The rats run to safety while you burn yourself down. Forgive. Let go. Heal.

Self-forgiveness
has been the hardest for me. Shame and humiliation kept me from speaking out for a long time. It has been very, very hard to forgive myself for having been fooled. For not watching the money when I should have known better, and because I was capable of learning to do it for myself. For adopting beliefs that ran so counter to my own instincts. Me, who set out on a journey at age fifteen to avoid being a statistic and landed right in the biggest cliché. Me, who read books about reason and science and fell for the biggest bunch of malarkey a person could. I felt like a failure, and I can’t tell you how many nights I have lain awake shaking my head, sick to my stomach with humiliation, guilt, and shame.
Irving (who never knew the details of my life with my mother) told me that he was sure I knew what was happening with the money and that I let my mom do it because I loved her. He said, “You’re too bright not to have known what was happening, Jewel.” I was flattered that he thought I was bright, and yet it felt hopeless to try to explain how I could not have known. I actually believed I should be able to slow time down enough to catch a missed flight! I felt like a liar and a phony. It took a long time to have enough self-love to see what I’d been up against, to see my part in everything, and to see the part of it that was simply a young child’s innate trust in her mom that could not be guarded against. I had wounds that made me vulnerable. That was my part in it, but there is no shame in that.

The difference between guilt and shame is best described for me in Brené Brown’s book
Daring Greatly
. She wrote separately on her blog, “There is a profound difference between shame and guilt. I believe that guilt is adaptive and helpful—it’s holding something we’ve done or failed to do up against our values and feeling psychological discomfort. I define shame as the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging—something we’ve experienced, done, or failed to do makes us unworthy of connection. I don’t believe shame is helpful or productive. In fact, I think shame is much more likely to be the source of destructive, hurtful behavior than the solution or cure. I think the fear of disconnection can make us dangerous.” There is another book I read many years after this time in my life called
Focusing
, by a philosopher and psychotherapist named Eugene Gendlin. He and a group of colleagues discovered that internal transformation in a person was not contingent on the type of therapy received, but rather that it was dependent on a process the patient engaged in inwardly. With practice, the natural tendency to engage in this self-reflection is teachable even to those who may not naturally do it. I highly recommend this book if you are interested to know more. It can be practiced on one’s
own or with a trusted friend. I like this method because it does not require money and can be done on its own, yet it also helps if you are already in traditional therapy. It goes beyond an intellectual understanding of a problem and helps engage your whole being in healing, affording real breakthroughs. When I read the book I recognized instantly that it was a process my writing led me to naturally since I was quite young, helping me get beyond merely my mind and into what I call my greater sense of intelligence. Our minds are wonderful tools but can also create a lot of interference or circular thoughts and chatter, which do not let us access our real intuition and truth.

I do believe in therapy, and recently have started going for the first time in my life. But it is important to find a therapist who works for you. I found it can be helpful to go in with a goal and that you use your therapist to help you effect change in that area. Therapy is like a road trip—it’s important to look in the rearview mirror and see where you have been, but you also need to know where you want to end up. Without knowing your goal, and developing a plan to get there, and spending time imagining and creating new neural pathways to support it, you will find yourself looping back to where you have already been because the roads are so familiar. It takes years to embrace a new emotional habit. A good therapist can help you look at the motivations and wounds from the past, and then help you make decisions about where you would like to be so you have an opportunity to actuate change.

It’s also important to look at different types of therapy. A breakthrough experience for me came just recently at a wonderful place called Onsite in Tennessee. They use some different modalities and do retreats that can create a real life-changer for participants. The Living Centered Program is my particular favorite, and their new facility for those suffering from trauma is very good. It was very useful in helping me process and find tools to deal with things that trigger trauma in me. I like to call
it human school. Therapy is expensive, and often the best facilities and practitioners are not covered by insurance, and so mental health becomes a luxury. I think that’s a shame, but there are still resources for anyone unwilling to accept unhappiness or emotional pain. No one in need of help deserves to feel like the answers exist solely beyond their own skin. Our happiness and fulfillment can be achieved with or without traditional therapy, with or without a supportive spouse, money, or a family we feel safe with. It is our birthright.