Why Jewel’s Career Always Comes 2nd to Her Mental Health: Exclusive

Jewel has been a longtime champion of putting her mental health first over her career.

“When I moved out at 15, I knew I had to learn about happiness and I pursued it,” the singer exclusively told Us Weekly while promoting mental health resources through her Not Alone Challenge. “And when I was homeless, the same thing. I was having panic attacks, [I was] agoraphobic.”

Jewel admitted that she began turning to music to cope with her struggles. It wasn’t her intention to become a huge star.

“When I was discovered, my No. 1 goal wasn’t to be a musician,” she reflected. “It was to make sure that I could learn how to be, I called it a happy, whole human instead of a human full of holes.”

After becoming a breakout star, Jewel confessed that she “always” put her “career second” to focus on her wellbeing.

“After [second album] Spirit and my hit [song] ‘Hands,’ I quit for two years because I just couldn’t handle it. I never wanted my mental health to be the price I paid for my career,” Jewel told Us. “And as we’re seeing with so many celebrities and artists, we’re losing too many people. This job is a difficult job, but so many jobs are, we have a lot of pressure that we’re dealing with in the world.”

Jewel shared that she believes that “happiness is a side effect of choices” which led her to make changes to create a “better environment” to help her thrive. The artist acknowledged that the business aspect of the music industry consistently doesn’t always check in to see how a performer is faring through their day-to-day life. However, Jewel said that she makes an effort to check in with other artists she’s close to.

“It just isn’t set up in a great way to encourage artists to pace themselves to see how they’re doing,” she said. “I mentor probably 15 or 20 musicians, and a lot of it’s about, ‘How do you pace yourself? How do you not believe the lie that if you drop out of the spotlight, you’re going to be irrelevant?’ That haunts people, and it shouldn’t.”

Jewel’s advocacy for mental health doesn’t stop there. That’s why she teamed up with iHeartRadio and the Inspiring Children Foundation for the third year of her Not Alone Challenge. The initiative provides free mental health resources and raises funds for nonprofit mental health programming.

“The Not Alone Challenge is built not just to raise awareness but to actually put tools in the hands of the people that need it the most,” Jewel told Us. “We’re really finding that there’s a lot of mental health deserts where there just aren’t enough therapists, or not everybody has money if they do have access to therapists. So we wanted to create something that allowed people to actually get the tools that they needed.”

Jewel added that many of the resources available through the Not Alone Challenge are “tools” she created to see if happiness was a “teachable skill.”

“One in four kids will have thoughts of suicidal ideation. And so it’s really more important than ever,” she said. “And that’s why with the Not Alone Challenge, which has really been, it’s been kind of a runaway success.”

In addition to advocating for mental health, Jewel is also dropping a new album titled The Portal: EP on November 15. The album is an extension of Jewel’s immersive art experience and includes guided meditations. The lead single, “The Portal,” is available to stream now.

With reporting by Christina Garibaldi