Turning Adversity Into Art, Resilience & Purpose: Paige Peterson

People will knock on your door. The question is, are you going to be ready to walk through the door? And are you going to take the risk to walk through the door? Because every time you walk through a door, there's a very good possibility you might fail.

For true creative people, how do you get into your peak performance flow state? There was no money, none. There were no options for me. That was a gift. That was so motivating in some ways because everything I did had to come from nature. I am someone who has a lot of anxiety. That's what propelled me to be a painter, to write books, to create things, to meet deadlines, to be a creator in the theater. It's all the same thing. You have a childlike curiosity. I want to have a salon. I want to have dinner parties. I want to have the most interesting people in the world sit around my table, and I want to produce beauty.

Paige Peterson, actor, author, painter, world traveler, extraordinary person. In this episode, we'll dive into all of it and her pathway to peak performance.

Welcome to the show. Today, Paige, we're going to talk about your pathway to peak performance and all the different things that you have done, which is pretty amazing. One thing I wanted to ask you right out of the gate is all the proceeds, all the profit from the show, go to the guest's charity.

All right. How about the Belvedere Tiburon Landmark Society?

Yeah, that was a great one. I mean, the preservation of all that history is amazing. As a matter of fact, I have to just take this moment to talk about one of my absolute favorite books, and I remember when you autographed that book and gave it to me. It's super personal to me and it's actually probably my favorite book of all time. And it's this one right here. Because not only the narratives and your story in that, but the photos are amazing. Tell the audience about how that came to be and how you put that together.

Yeah. It's so funny. I had lunch with a friend of mine who has a blog called the New York Social Diary and he asked me about my childhood. I told him and he said, "Oh, you need to write an article for me and put some history in. That's really amazing." So, we wrote this very long article that came out, and Arnold Palmer's widow walked into the Belvedere Tiburon Landmark Society and said, "This ought to be a book." And they called me up and said, "Will you do a book for us?" Not unlike the history of Belvedere and the history of Tiburon, which they have done before. So I agreed to do that as a gift to my hometown. The Belvedere Tiburon Landmark Society are the producers of this book, and Dave Gotz, who's the Tiburon historian, and I worked on this book together. We produced this—it's the history from the Miwok Indians until today.

Yeah. Really interesting.

Yes. And my childhood friend, Anne Lamott, gave me the most beautiful quote that she allowed me to put on the cover of the book because we had this shared childhood, just as you and I have a shared childhood. It was all the same for us. We were feral children. It was a beautiful life, and our children don't even know what we're talking about when we talk about what we were doing in Tiburon.

No. You think about those days, you could be all the way out on Ring Mountain.

Oh, not a problem. No, that was I guess what they call free-range parenting. We were just doing it, and it was such an incredible time.

I know. It was extraordinary. I remember a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, a glass jar that had stayed in the freezer all night, and it would go into the basket of my bicycle at 8:00 in the morning and my mother would say, "See you at 4:30." That was it. She had no idea where I was, what I was doing. Snacks, no such thing. A peanut butter and jelly sandwich was enough.

It's enough. And then if the water ran out, we drank out of hoses, which of course now we know is a horrendous thing to do, but we did it all the time.

Yeah, I drank out of hoses all the time.

Well, I still do.

Yeah.

I'm 70. It's okay at this point.

Yeah. Well, you have a really interesting history in terms of two coasts and then also a lot of international stuff. So, I'm curious. I want to talk about the books. I want to talk about how you came to be an artist and an author and be on TV and off-Broadway and all of those types of things. But I'm curious, where do you want to start?

We went to Redwood High School and your kids went to Redwood, didn't they?

Mhm. Yeah.

All right. So, I had something unbelievably sweet happen to me recently. I got a call from somebody and they said, "You've been named a Redwood Giant at Redwood High School," which is an incredible honor considering that there were 980 kids in my graduating class in 1973. And I had been a theater kid. That was where I put all my energy. From freshman, sophomore, junior, senior, I was in every musical. And I loved it. I was never... I never got out of the chorus. I never had a big part. I don't even think I had a speaking part, but it was community and it's where I went that was sort of a safe place. I wasn't an athlete. And at Redwood, there was a guy named JD Nichols who ran this division of the musical theater, and it was unbelievably good. So, I started in the theater there. I have to say Redwood High School really was a formative place for me as an actor.

There are a lot of people that came out of that program that have gone on to do things at a high level. And actually, I can remember seeing my daughter in a production there. I won't name what it was, but it was a production that she was in. She was the lead, and I was blown away at the quality.

Unbelievable.

It was maybe one of the best live performances I've ever seen. And these are high school kids.

It's as good as off-Broadway. And that's quite a statement to make about a high school, but it's true. And it was at my time and it continues to be.

A lot of history, a lot of heritage there.

Lots. I went and spoke to some of the classrooms as part of being honored with this. They asked you to come in and speak to kids about what it was, how Redwood High School formed my life and my professional life, and the kids were just remarkable. It was great.

Yeah. You know, it's interesting, the time in which you're there at Redwood, this area, Marin County, was totally different than it is today. It's taking off. It's starting to grow, but it's not populated the way that it is. Redwood is the huge school, I imagine. There's Tam High there at that point in time, but Redwood... there's not as much stuff north.

No, Redwood's big. I think it's the biggest school by far at that point, right?

Oh, yes. As I said, there were almost a thousand kids in my graduating class.

Unbelievable. You go in freshman year. It's an interesting time in the history of this country and you graduate in '73, which is... I remember being a kid in '73 and just the feeling of hope and...

...was also Vietnam. And Janis Joplin and the Dead. Yeah. It was really complicated. So, when do you go to New York?

Well, I was very fortunate that I started working with the Breer Agency in San Francisco. And I think because I didn't ever really want to be an actor, I just happened to be good at it and it was natural for me, but it wasn't a goal for me. So I would go into these interviews and I would get everything because I wasn't desperate. I was very relaxed about it. So at 17, I turned Equity, AFTRA, and SAG. I mean, that's very young to do that at that time, and I was doing lots of commercials because in those days actors didn't want to do commercials. It was sort of the bottom of the barrel. So I needed to make money. I was a kid that had to have a job. And so I started doing national commercials and local commercials.

And then that led into my having the extraordinary luck of meeting a woman named Vivian Vance, who was mostly known for Ethel in I Love Lucy, although she was a great Broadway actress and had amazing theatrical chops. She rented my mother's house, my house on the lagoon. And my mother, who didn't know anything about the theater, said to me at one point, "Oh, somebody's rented our house. Take down these samples. She wants to recover a couch." My mother was an interior designer at the time. And I walked down because we lived on Beach Road. And I opened the door. It was unbelievable. And of course, I was like, "Oh my god." I loved her in an instant, and I had a kind of an energy that she loved. And she started watching local television and started seeing me on these commercials, and she asked me if I would go on the road with her, which I did. We crossed the country with a show called The Marriage-Go-Round and Harvey and all sorts of things, and we ended up in New York.

So that was an amazing thing. But you know one of the things that I've said to some kids, and I actually said it at Redwood, is people will knock on your door. The question is, are you going to be ready to walk through the door? And are you going to take the risk to walk through the door? Because every time you walk through a door, there's a very good possibility you might fail. I didn't ever have that thought. I was just sort of like, "This is an adventure." And I wasn't thinking, at 30, where I was going to be. It was just in the moment. That was an extraordinary thing to do. So I spent five years with her on the road and then very sadly she died of cancer.

Her husband was a man named John Dodds, and he was sort of the Maxwell Perkins of the literary world. Maxwell Perkins was a very famous book editor, sort of invented the whole thing of his generation. And he and I... I will tell the story because he would like it. Two weeks after she died, he asked me to move to New York with him, and I was very confused by why he would ask me such a question. So at dinner he said, "By the way, I was gay when Viv met me. I spent 25 years in love with that woman, and I'm going back to my gay life. I can't do this alone. Come to New York with me." And I was so relieved that that was the question he was going to ask that I said, "Let's go." And so I moved to New York with John, and that's where I met my community, which was a literary community. And then I was on a soap opera. Vivian got me involved with the William Morris Agency. So I was a William Morris actor.

Big.

That was an incredible piece of luck. And I was with them for 12 years. And they were wonderful with me. So I did theater work there and then I did some television.

Yeah. You actually had your own show at one point in time that was interrupted by something that... you may or may not want to share this. I mean, I think it's an interesting part of your story and certainly part of that pathway to peak performance and overcoming difficult situations. So up to you.

Thank you for the opportunity. It was an amazing thing. I had gotten married in New York. I had two little children. I was in the middle of a divorce, and I was a producer and an on-air person at the Lifetime Network called Our Home. And I would produce pieces and go in and do 20-minute segments, and they were really wonderful. And I think I was on my way up the ladder at the Lifetime Network. That was good. And suddenly I started having enormous amounts of anxiety. Well, I'm an anxious person anyway. I mean, anxiety throws you forward. Anxiety doesn't need to be negative. For me, it worked in every way. But I also noticed that I wasn't tracking as well and I was forgetting... words were no longer... I couldn't retrieve them very quickly, and that showed in my performance.

And one day I was with my kids by myself at a Kmart of all places, and I lost my sight. And I said to my little daughter, "I can't see. I can't see. We have to sit down." And I lost my sight for maybe three minutes. Total loss of sight. Black. And then fireworks. When my sight began to return, there were fireworks. And I didn't really understand what that meant. And I did a terrible thing. I got in the car and I drove from East Hampton to New York with my kids, having had that happen, but I just thought it was a one-off sort of thing. I thought maybe I had a sinus infection. So, I went to a doctor and said, "I have a sinus infection." She said, "You know, let's just take an MRI. We'll see what happens." It takes three or four days to get results back from an MRI.

And I happened to be on a train with Peter Brown, who was one of the managers of the Beatles, and John Reid, who had managed Queen and Elton John. The three of us were sitting on this train on our way... Elton was up in a helicopter on his way. And we were on our way to the first dinner that Tony Blair from England was having with Clinton. We were on our way to this very small dinner. And Peter said, "Oh, darling, why don't you call and find out what kind of antibiotic you need so we can get it in Washington D.C.?" And I called, and the nurse said, "Oh, the doctor's on the line." She said, "You need to come into my office." And I said, "I'm not coming into your office. I'm on a train. I'm going to Washington D.C." She said, "Paige, you have an inoperable brain tumor. You have to get off that train and you have to come home." And I said it out loud. I said it out loud, "I have an inoperable brain tumor," as if I could not believe it. And Peter looked at me shocked. And we got off the train, and I said, "Well, if I'm going to die, I'm sure as hell going to the White House. I'm not going to go back to New York."

So for three days, I had the most marvelous time at the White House. There was a dinner and a morning and it was fantastic. And then I went home and I walked into this woman and she said, "By the way, we've discovered it's not inoperable. We do not think that it is malignant, but you need surgery right away." And three days later, I had massive brain surgery, and I had a tumor the size of a golf ball wrapped around my sagittal sinus, which is at the top of your head. And it was really an incredible wakeup call.

Yeah, that is something interesting that your reaction to that was like, "Hey, but you know what? I'm going to live life to the fullest. Absolutely. No matter what." And then you took care of business and made it happen. I remember you sharing with me that you came back to St. Stephen's.

Oh yes. Thank you for remembering that. Thank you. Two weeks after the surgery. You know, brain surgery doesn't affect your limbs. For me, it didn't affect my limbs. I traveled across the country with my two children. They had just taken the 58 staples out of my head. And I flew home, and the first thing I did was I left my children with my mother and I went to Sunday service at St. Stephen's. I had been a choir girl there. I had been baptized, one of the first people ever baptized at St. Stephen's Church in 1955, and I had spent my life in that church. And you and I were on the vestry together. You were head of the vestry, and you know that church is so meaningful to me. And Zara Schülen was there, and I was in a pew and I just took my hat off. And she was horrified when she saw the top of my head because it's very grizzly. Brain surgeries are grizzly. That was... church is a very important thing to me. Faith and St. Stephen's, that building, that space, was very healing for me.

That's an incredible story and deeply personal. So, I appreciate you sharing that with people because I think sometimes we get to that spot where the only thing that's going to get you through is that faith.

Yeah. And I have to tell you something interesting, Jock. I didn't know it at the time, but I was later diagnosed with something called Cowden syndrome. I'm sort of the poster child for Cowden syndrome. The only thing I don't have are lesions under my eyes. But this is what happened to me. I had a burst ovary, a brain tumor, stage 4 thyroid cancer, uterine cancer, and then tumors in my hips every 18 months in my 40s. And this is a syndrome that's very strange. And then it stopped. I'm 70 years old. I've never had a problem since, but I spent 10 years basically in and out of Sloan Kettering. It was very tough. And that actually is where I began to paint. My isolation in my illness, going through the cancer treatments. I sat in my hospital rooms and began to sketch.

And you've done a lot of that.

I have done a lot of that. Yes, I have.

It doesn't stop. You keep going. I think there are a number of projects that are happening right now. Let's talk a little bit about the books.

Okay. All right. So we can easily... we covered a little bit about growing up. Belvedere loves historical photos, before and afters. I love those, the progression. We're sitting... you and I have a friend who is actually responsible for the building that we're sitting in here today. Where we're sitting right now used to be just an old train yard. Do you remember walking down here?

Yeah. And the smell of the... what? It's not the tar. What is it? It's like grease.

It's a fantastic scent. You never forget it walking down the old railroad tracks.

Hence Blackie the horse, who stood still. So when I was a child, my sister and I, this is part of the feral childhood. We would walk down to the M&B, which is now Woodlands. It was the M&B at the time. And we called everybody mister. Nobody had a first-name basis with a kid, which I actually missed that.

That was an interesting thing. Yeah. We knew you never spoke to an adult by their first name ever.

It was totally disrespectful. And we would go to the grocer. We would go to the vegetable guy and go in the back and say, "We're going to feed Blackie. Do you have any carrots or apples or whatever?" And he would fill up a bag with apples, sugar cubes, and carrots. And my sister and I would walk down the old railroad tracks. And you could feel, and I know you did this, you could feel the train coming on the rails before you could hear it. You could feel it. So, we were always putting our hands down to feel if there was any rumbling. And when it would come, we would simply step off, wave to the conductor, it would go through. Usually, it wasn't always a passenger train. Oftentimes they were loaded with redwood trees that were coming from Ukiah that would go down to the train station where you and I played when we were kids, and then they would be barged over to Oakland.

Amazing. And in that bay was also... they salvaged all the old ships. It was a salvage center. I mean Tiburon was a blue-collar industrial town.

Yeah. There was nothing, and Belvedere was a little more precious, but still, it was different. But Tiburon was like that. It was a totally different community. Tiburon was pretty rough.

Tiburon and Belvedere are still different, even though it's Belvedere-Tiburon 94920, it's very different. So back to walking down. My sister and I would walk down the railroad tracks by ourselves and go feed that horse, that swayback horse that had lived in that pasture for 24 years. And he wasn't particularly friendly, probably because he was isolated.

And I'm going to tell you a story. This is so funny. I wrote this book with a man named Christopher Cerf. Christopher Cerf and I were partners in some publishing stuff together. And Christopher Cerf's father was Bennett Cerf from Random House. And the first job after Harvard, Christopher was taken to Random House and his father said, "Oh, your first edit, the first person you're going to edit is a guy named Ted Geisel." He ended up, of course, being Dr. Seuss. So Chris was excited about doing Blackie, the first children's book he ever did, and he turned it into rhyme. But the story was of my sister and myself walking down to this old horse that we used to feed. And then, of course, my mother, my beautiful mother who died on Christmas Eve. God bless her. She's certainly an icon in Belvedere as a two-term mayor. And her great love affair was with Belvedere.

One of a kind.

One of a kind. But then she adored you.

Thank you.

You and your family coming to her memorial meant so much to me, and it would have to her. She adored you. We were driving around and we saw Blackie had laid down. So, actually we were there when they put Blackie to sleep. Now, we didn't write that in the book. We said that he peacefully went off, but they did. And then they buried him there.

They did bury him. There are some people who say, "Oh, is it true? Is he in the grave?" He's definitely in the grave. They took a tractor and they lifted him up and they put him in that grave. So, Blackie, the thing that's so great about this horse, and I know you're going to remember this, is that it created open space because Mr. Connell, who owned the pasture, who owned Blackie, refused to sell that property to anyone as long as Blackie was alive. And that's what created open space. And then the community got together when Mr. Connell died and they bought the property, and that created McKegney Green and everything else. So that book is a conservation book. It's a book about how community comes together and saves an old horse and then saves property for open space.

Wild story, too, because you think about it. There are so many places that were preserved, and people are still fighting to preserve what's left of that open space in the southern Marin area on a whole.

That's right. Particularly in Tiburon. You know, you've been described by people as the most magnanimous person in Belvedere.

Oh.

So, it's interesting to me that it seems like you travel all over. You've done a lot of things. I don't know if you're willing to share your interest in and time that you spent also in the Middle East.

Well, there is a family that lives on Crest Road that I have known all of my life that's from Saudi Arabia. So, I had this affinity for Saudi because I love this couple, and we were like family. They're here now, actually. And I had this sort of romance with the Arab world because this family was so integrated into my life. And the man who lives up on Crest had gone to Stanford. He was the first Saudi Arabian to ever get an MBA from Stanford. And what happens is that Saudis try to buy homes near where they went to school. Do you know that in every single junior college, college, and university, there is a Saudi student in this country right now? Most Saudis come to the United States to be educated. It's a very interesting thing.

Anyway, I became involved with the National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations in Washington D.C. I've been on the board for 15 years, and so I started traveling to the Middle East in 2014 when Saudi Arabia was still a closed country. And I went three or four times a year. I was actually working for the Huntsman Cancer Institute, and I was sent over by Jon Huntsman to get Saudi patients to come to his hospital, the Huntsman Cancer Institute in Salt Lake City. You know, Saudis went to MD Anderson or Sloan Kettering or Boston or the Mayo Clinic, and he wanted those patients to come to him. So that's why I went over there as an executive. I started writing about it because I couldn't believe this extraordinary country.

And I've always... if you can paint, you can take pictures. I truly believe all those creative things just sit in you. If you're open to it, you can find a way to do it. So, I started taking photographs, and I'd always taken photographs, but I became a photojournalist. And then I've been published 52 times now about the Middle East and sort of opened that up a lot. I've also spent time in Oman, which is an amazing country. Just remarkable.

Let's come back to the books. Let's try to get through all of them. So we've talked about Blackie. Let's talk about the other books. I think they're super cool, and I always like the fact that I get to see them before other people.

Yes, you do. It's interesting when I started writing about the Middle East, I have a very good friend of mine named Jesse Kornbluth, who is a marvelous editor. And I do nothing alone. I'm a team player. I don't do anything alone. I work with people. Everybody sees my work before it goes out. I am an absolute team player. So, I asked Jesse if he would start editing my articles that I was writing. And he thought that was terrific. And he said to me, "Why don't we do a book together? Let's do A Christmas Carol. You know, A Christmas Carol is this extraordinary story that is so long-winded there isn't a kid in the world that'll sit through it. Let's cut it in half. You illustrate it, and we'll produce it." So I was thrilled to work with Jesse Kornbluth. Jesse Kornbluth worked at Vanity Fair and he's just this icon in New York City as this brilliant writer.

These three books, Blackie, The Secret Garden, and A Christmas Carol are out of copyright. It's the only way we could do this. It takes a hundred years to get out of copyright. So, we chose these three books because they were out of copyright. And then Jesse would cut the words in half for Black Beauty and A Christmas Carol. And then I would illustrate it, and I would lay it out. And I laid it out with actually Dave Gotz right here in Tiburon. And a wonderful friend of mine named Gretchen Kimball sponsored us and was our champion throughout these three books. She's just an amazing person.

When we did The Secret Garden, I noticed that Jesse wasn't on his game, and I couldn't figure out whether he was preoccupied with another book he was writing, but I got involved and I started to get involved in the editing of the book. So that's why it's abridged by Jesse Kornbluth and Paige Peterson. And in the end, before The Secret Garden was produced, Jesse went in to have back surgery and he never left the hospital. And a year later, he died of Parkinson's and Lewy body dementia. Luckily, this book, The Secret Garden, came out before he died, and we won two Zibby Awards. And I was so thrilled that he got to know that he had won these two awards for this book, which is just marvelous. But oh my goodness, this Lewy body dementia is really tough and very, very sad. And he left us in February of this year.

Yeah. Tough that is. Woof.

But at least going out on a high note.

On a high note. Three books in three years. Yeah. We all have our number. We don't know when it is. You hope that on the day that you step off the planet that you've left a great legacy and done some great things.

So, hey, I'm curious for true creative people, you have to kind of get into some sort of flow. Some people procrastinate. It takes them a long time to get there, and then it just happens. They just boom, they go. But they talk about flow state and kind of getting into a creative process to make stuff happen. How does this happen for you? How do you get into your peak performance flow state?

You know, I have to sort of go back to the beginning. We were a family that was house-rich, cash-poor. So, we got to live in Belvedere. That's fantastic. But there was no money. None. I mean, none. My sister and I had one pair of pants. We'd have to stand in front of the dryer to wait for our pants to come out. There was no money. That was so motivating in some ways because everything I did had to come from nature. And I was a natural interior designer. I was a natural builder, and I wanted to create beauty. And so I would go out, and there were no options for me. That was a gift. There were no options.

So, I would go out and cut little stems off of trees, and I would try to figure out how to build something. I had a dollhouse made out of pegboard that my grandfather built me. And I would find things to create floors and rugs. And I had this fantasy that I could create rooms. Of course, this came from my mother because she was an interior designer. And in the closet, she would have little teeny tiles that she would show to clients, and I would go in and ask, "Can I have a tile?" And then I'd put the tile down and I would paint the walls of my house. That's what I did because there were no options. When I had a little girl, somebody said, "Oh, let's buy her a dollhouse with all the plastic stuff." And I thought, "No, the creativity is in creating it." What is that? Like that whole sort of... I can't even remember the name of it... those plastic dollhouses that you buy, the plastic chair. There's nothing creative about that at all.

So that's where my genesis came from, is that I could create beauty and create an environment that I would want to live in. So it came from that. And so I started painting when I was 17. Yeah, maybe a little earlier. I wasn't very talented, but I could see. I was an observer. And luckily, I had gone into a lot of beautiful homes in my life, and I'd looked at paintings, and I'd looked at interior design, and I'd looked at the fabric. I was a kid that looked at everything. I was quiet, and I looked at everything, saw everything. And I would have fantasies of how I want to live. And I'm living it now at 70. I'm now living it, which is really wonderful.

But it came from that. Also, Jock, I am someone who has a lot of anxiety. I just... that's where I come from. And that anxiety doesn't necessarily have to be negative. It's like being an opportunist. These are words that some people think are negative things. Anxiety propels me forward. It's not a terrible thing. I'm not crushed by it, but it is a sense of, "I need to be doing something that I'm going to feel good about." So, that's what propelled me to be a painter, to write books, to create things, to meet deadlines, to be a creator in the theater. It's all the same thing.

I like a beginning, a middle, and an end of something. I'm really good at deadlines. Those deadlines propel me forward. That anxiety of... to be an illustrator is a scary thing to do, but I would go out of the box, right? Oh, there... that's a hallucination. I painted that in my garden. Some of it is what used to be and some of it's not. But you can see I don't worry about the size of the feet. I don't get so involved in the illustrating of something that it has to be perfect. It just has to be something that a child could see the story in.

And also, the other thing when I illustrated Blackie, I wanted children to be able to think, "Oh, I could do that." I used to look at children's books and think, "I could never draw that. It's too good." But in Blackie, I made sure that these illustrations were something that a kid might be able to think they could do. You know, to be bold and sort of ridiculous. And it's not perfect by any means.

Okay, this is a really funny story. I begged the publisher of this book, Lena L'Etoile, to take this out. I said, "You know, it's terrible. I did it really quickly. I was tired. Take it out." She said, "No, I won't do it." So, I used to go when I would speak at schools—and I have spoken to hundreds of schools—I would say, "What's your favorite illustration and your least favorite illustration?" And every single time, this thing I tried to take out was the kids' favorite illustration because they could do it. They could do that. So, I was motivated by the child in me, the child that wasn't particularly talented. I wasn't a child that was particularly good at drawing, but I loved it. I was better at making things with my hands in design, but I ended up letting go of my ego and thinking, "I can do this in a childlike way."

Now, you know, I'm a painter. And the next thing I'm doing... somebody said to me the other day, my mother died, and then my friend Jesse Kornbluth died, and then I moved to New York. It was one of those things that were really hard. Somebody asked me the other day, "What's next?" And I'm going to tell you, I'm having a show in New York City of paintings. And I'm very excited. It's at Gerald Peters Gallery in New York, and I'm going to do big paintings, probably beautiful exterior and interior paintings, maybe some portraits. I don't know yet. But I'm going back to painting. Illustrating isn't necessarily painting. These books are paintings, but it's a very different process.

It's such an interesting question and so complicated of what makes me motivated to do something. But it is the child in me. It's always goes back to the child in me. I read a book about Gertrude Stein. I want to be Gertrude Stein. I don't want to have Alice B. Toklas in my life, but I want to be Gertrude Stein. I want to have a salon. I want to have dinner parties. I want to have the most interesting people in the world sit around my table, and I want to produce beauty. And so that came from a very, very young age.

Yeah. It's interesting. You had this... you said a couple of things there that I'm still sort of spinning from. The first one is that having limited options or no options is a gift. That's a profound statement. You have to actually... I don't want to put words in your mouth, but it seems like you actually have to live it all the way through to come to that place to understand that that actually was a gift.

That was a gift. And I didn't know any better at the time because we were sort of an isolated family. And so I didn't really know what other kids had. So I had no envy for what other children had.

You have a childlike curiosity that is perpetual. It's never ended. It's continued. You bring it everywhere that you go. You always bring this positivity. I remember calling you one time. I'm like, "Hey, Paige, how are you doing?"

"I'm on a deadline."

Oh yeah. "Don't talk to me."

There's that. There's that high anxiety.

"Talk to you later. Bye-bye." Deadlines are crushing sometimes.

Yeah. Kind of coming back to the pathway to peak performance. Do you have a thought process around people finding their own way and being true to themselves?

I love that. I think it's a beautiful thing. The paths are different now. I didn't graduate from college. I went to New York. I mean, I had an opportunity with Vivian Vance and I took it. It's different now. Everything is very, very different, the path in which you go.

Paige, what's your hope for somebody... if a young person is listening to this right now. Let's imagine they're an entrepreneur. You are certainly an entrepreneur. You've described yourself as an opportunist.

Yes. You look for opportunities.

And I think that's pretty... that's a bold and honest statement. Not too many people would be that honest.

Well, if for some reason "opportunity" is like a bad word, that's ridiculous. I mean, if you don't grab your opportunity, then shame on you.

And you've said that you need to be prepared for that opportunity.

Absolutely. And prepare. I mean, I'm a very disciplined person. So, I do my due diligence and I work very hard to get things done, but I have had open doors that I didn't know what I was walking through. But man, I knew I did some serious work to find out what that was. I mean, to get on stage with Vivian Vance, let me assure you something. I mean, that was insane. I was so young and I played opposite her. It was an amazing thing.

If you just think about that, I Love Lucy was the most popular show in the United States. Every show that has come up after I Love Lucy is just a version of I Love Lucy. If you think... even Friends.

Yeah, it's all... I mean, they really started it.

Think about how progressive that was at that time, too. Ricky Ricardo.

That's right. And he was brilliant. Viv was a very well-established and respected Broadway actress. And she was in a show, if my memory serves me right, in Santa Barbara. And they drove up to see her in that show. He said, "This is our Ethel." And Lucy was a little intimidated by her because people in L.A. at that time had great respect for New York. I'm not sure if it's still the same way, but there was an intimidation of New York actors.

How lucky are you to be able to live on two coasts?

Oh, I'm so blessed. I'm so blessed. And I just moved. I was in an apartment on Central Park West for 42 years where I raised my kids. A four-bedroom apartment. It's a rental building and they just quadrupled the rent, and I have moved to a one-bedroom in the penthouse on the 18th floor. And I am just so thrilled, this little jewel box in the sky. And I'm going back in two weeks because I am always involved in the United Nations General Assembly. And early on, I'm speaking and then I'm giving... I always give a cocktail party for the United Nations for some of the ambassadors that are there. So, I'm going to be back in this cute little pied-à-terre for the month of September before I come back for the film festival.

You're a very interesting person, Paige. And I think I remember the first time I ever met you was sort of one of those electric moments.

Yes, I felt the same way.

Yeah, for me it was sort of like, "Oh, we're there. Okay. We're going to be friends."

"There you are. I've been missing you."

I felt that way, too. And, you know, I think it's just always been... you've always been a special person to me, and I just think... I was so grateful to know you. I think so many people feel that way. And you're such a contributor and a positive influence in so many ways. You've had such a positive influence on my daughter.

I love your kids. I love both your kids. They're just great children.

They love you.

Beautiful.

Final thoughts? Anything that you want to share? What does the world need to be thinking about right now?

Being kind. Oh my goodness. We all just need to be kind to each other. What's going on in the Middle East is just so horrendous right now. It breaks my heart. It can bring me to tears. And I don't want to become political, but we need to take care of each other and be kind and lift each other up and hold a place for peace and love. I have had the gift of being involved with a man named Jerry Jampolsky from the time I was a little girl. I met him when I was four years old, and I got involved in the Center for Attitudinal Healing when it started in 1973 right here in Tiburon.

Jerry's office was right there.

Right there. Yeah. And his influence on me is so profound. And he would say, "It's all about love and being kind and forgiving." Nobody's perfect. We all make mistakes.

Nobody.

Yeah. Well, you're the best.

So are you.

Thank you for coming and it's just absolutely a pleasure to spend this time with you.

Thank you.

Hey, thanks everyone for watching the show. Please remember to like, comment, and subscribe. It really helps us out here at the channel. And share the video with someone who might be interested in supporting the charity that our guest mentioned in the episode. Thanks again. We'll see you soon.