Joined: 25 Aug 2013 Age: 67 Gender: Male Posts: 36,231 Location: Long Island, New York
17 Aug 2024, 8:21 am
Female empowerment for 1
_________________ Professionally Identified and joined WP August 26, 2013 DSM 5: Autism Spectrum Disorder, DSM IV: Aspergers Moderate Severity
“My autism is not a superpower. It also isn’t some kind of god-forsaken, endless fountain of suffering inflicted on my family. It’s just part of who I am as a person”. - Sara Luterman
As a teenager, Jewel had her share of hard times, including a period of homelessness. To soothe herself, she wrote a song called “Raven” when she was 16.
“My whole career, the slant that the media gave it was through a really, I dare say, patriarchal lens,” Jewel said. “You think of my origin story, right? The whole world knows I lived in my car. They think because I was fighting for my dream of music. That is an absolute misrepresentation of what happened. I was living in my car because I wouldn’t have sex with my boss. I refused to be leveraged and he wouldn’t give me my paycheck and I couldn’t pay my rent and I started living in my car and then my car got stolen and I was homeless because of that, because I wouldn’t bang a boss.”
Jewel continued, “I said that at the time, I said that in every interview, but it was almost like people didn’t even have the ears to hear it. They would just write the story, ‘Jewel lived in her car to pursue her music career.’ That’s not why I lived in my car. I was not even thinking I would be a musician. I was trying to figure out how to stand up for myself, how to refuse to be leveraged for anything or anyone. It was an active defiance, it was an act of courage.”