In this fifth in her series of exclusive blogs for The Boot, Jewel goes back in time to a painful place … She was struggling to make a living off her music and dodging critics about her weight. Read below, in the celebrated singer/songwriter’s own words.

So there I was, Somewhere USA, in a bathroom stall of a dressing room in a crappy bar, kneeling over the toilet and crying. Was I sick? No. Well sort of – but not sick to my stomach. Well, I had a stomachache, don’t get me wrong, but it was purely self-induced. It wasn’t the flu – it was cake. A whole cake. Has this ever happened to anyone else? Has anyone ever eaten an entire birthday cake by yourself? No? Just me?

Let me start by giving you a little background. I was 20 or so and I was tired. I had recently been “discovered” two years earlier. You all probably know the story – I was homeless for a year when I was 18 because I had a boss who asked me to sleep with him one day. When I turned him down, he didn’t give me my paycheck, and when I couldn’t pay rent, I was kicked out of where I was living. My solution? Live in my car until I got a new job, and I could save enough money for a deposit on a new apartment. Well, it didn’t quite work out like that. I had sick kidneys, and kept missing work at new jobs because I was sick, and so I kept getting fired. Then the car I was living in got stolen … which sucked.

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Just wanted to make a quick note… I just moved from North Carolina to Georgia so my internet was down during that time. Updates should be back to normal now!

The site hasn’t been updated in a long time. After the site was hacked and we lost all content. We lost all motivation to update this site. I decided it was finally time to start working on this site again. I’ve made new layouts for the site and the gallery. I started working on rebuilding the gallery. It is now open so you can view what I add. There isn’t much there, but it’s a start. We also now have a twitter page @jewelkorg please follow us for site updates! Updates will be more often now! Thanks so much to the visitors who have stuck with us over the years!

Jewel would like to set the record straight: She did not bail on Alaskans when two shows were canceled many years ago. And, yes, she’ll certainly show up at concerts scheduled this week.

“I was on tour on both occasions already and I’ve never double-booked anything in my life,” she says of long-standing reports that she canceled a New Year’s Eve concert to ring in 2000 as well as an appearance at the Alaska State Fair in 1996, when she was touring with Neil Young.

The 35-year-old singer-songwriter, born Jewel Kilcher, said she was never booked for the shows by her agency that she knew of and was surprised when people asked about her going to Alaska. It bothers her that so many Alaskans believe she abandoned the shows — some airing their resentments quite vociferously.

Her Alaska roots helped make her “a creative, independent, freethinking woman,” says Jewel, who was 6 when she began performing with her father in her hometown of Homer.

After leaving Alaska, she was living in a van in San Diego before vaulting from obscurity with her 1995 debut album, “Pieces of You,” and hits like “You Were Meant for Me” and “Who Will Save Your Soul.”

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