Pop singer Jewel Kilcher is telling fans that her own mother embezzled more than one hundred million dollars from the singer’s accounts.
The singer, song writer, and actress spoke of her family troubles and how it affected her mental health during an appearance on the “Very Mind Project: with Amy Morin during which she reported that her mother, Lenedra J. Carroll, stole all her money, according to Fox News.
“I didn’t really realize what my mom was until I was 30-something. I woke up and realized she embezzled all of my money, over $100 million,” Jewel said.
The “You Were Meant for Me” singer added that before she knew it she was deeply in debt.
“Thirty-four years old, realize I’m $3 million in debt, realize my mom stole it, realize everything I thought my mom was, isn’t what she was, very difficult psychological thing to come to terms with,” she said.
The 48-year-old Alaska native went on to reveal that she never understood that her parents got divorced when she was eight because her mom did not want to be tied down with children.
“My mom and dad got divorced when I was 8, and we went to live with my dad. Nobody told me it’s because my mom didn’t want to be a mom. She left us, and so my dad took over raising us. I didn’t know that at the time,” Jewel said.
Sadly, dad was no gem, either, and was an alcoholic and abuser.
“My dad was this volatile alcoholic that hit me, very easy to identify ‘bad guy.’ My mom seemed like the opposite. She was calm, she was soft, she never yelled, obviously never hit me. And I didn’t realize I was being abused in another way at the time,” she added.
But she also noted that her dad was abused by his father, too, so he grew up in an abusive environment. But by the time she was making a lot of money singing, her mother swooped in to “manage” her finances and prey on her feelings of wanting a mother in her life. Sadly, a whole new level of abuse began, and while she was selling millions of albums, her mother was stealing most of the money she was making.
She also said she grew up in a scary world, even when she first began her singing career.
“I was bar singing as an 8-year-old. I was around predators, I had a very scary life. I had a very terrifying life. And I had a life where adults weren’t safe people, being in connection to people wasn’t safe,” she explained.
Still, Jewel said in the past that she does not see her troubled parents as “villains.”
“My mom isn’t a villain. My dad isn’t a villain,” Jewel said in 2015. “People get some things right and people get some things wrong. And the song for me, ‘Family Tree,’ is about looking at that. I think the line is, ‘To take the fruit and choose the seeds you want to scatter into the wind.'”
Now, as she nears 50 years of age, Jewel has started a non-profit to help children with their mental health, and has launched her own mental health app called Innerworld.
“I didn’t have a safe figure (growing up),” Jewel said. “But that’s also why I formed our youth foundation, is because there’s real hope for kids like that,” she said. And while she wants to help children with broken homes or who are experiencing tough times, she also wants them to feel worthy. “It doesn’t mean they’re broken either. There’s so many tools and things we can do to help ourselves with a little bit of guidance.”
Jewel reportedly reconciled with her abusive father, Atz Kilcher, after he finally got sober in his 60s, according to People magazine. But her mother is a different story. In 2015, Jewel noted that she broke off contact with her mother in 2010 after realizing that Carroll had stolen so much of her money..
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Facebook at: facebook.com/Warner.Todd.Huston, or Truth Social @WarnerToddHuston
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.