In this episode, I talk with Artist, Musician and Educator, Paige Clark Perkinson. Paige was a working actor, when she decided to start her family. She talks about her struggles with anxiety and depression while her son was still in her belly, and how after he was born, she found herself questioning if the decision to create a family meant that parts of her would have to disappear. “Things were fine for a while. And then it came time to get back in the game and start acting again. And then there was this whole piece of guilt about where I spent my time. And I felt there was this resistance of my identity being limited to only a mother from then on. I had to say that I was an actor. I am an artist. How dare you? I got really defensive for a while.”

Paige talks about raising her son, who is one quarter Korean, when both she and her mother weren’t raised in the Korean culture. “It’s been a weird experience to be singled out and excluded for something that I really don’t feel a part of. I don’t get the benefits of being part of a community. But I get the detriments of being excluded, because I look like I’m part of that community.”

What started as Paige’s “day job” working as an arts educator, has now become her primary focus. She is still an artist, she is still an actor, she is still a musician, but they have moved to the background of her life. She loves her students, she loves her job, but she acknowledges the little deaths she has had to go through in her life. “I am mourning expectations, mourning the loss of these hopes. That’s definitely how I would describe even my reaction to wanting a girl but having a boy. I was mourning the expectation. And I will be happy about what I do get. But first I need to mourn the change.”

Highlights from Paige:

"Whether it's at nine in the morning, and they're asleep or it's at eight o'clock at night, when we're in tech rehearsal and tensions are running high, I think about using my powers for good. Theater tips over into the realm of non-academic. It gets really personal and emotional and I thrive on being there for them. I gives me purpose, it gives me meaning."

"So that's how I'm approaching having a quarter racial, Korean son— helping him notice the differences in other kids around him. We live in a diverse neighborhood, I think, and in the summertime, he'll say, 'Oh their skin is brown' and I will tell him that yes, some people's skin is brown, some is peach, some is very dark and that is all okay."

"I wish at 18 I had believed that. I wish I could have stood in my own beauty and my own power at that age. Saying it now, I think I'm definitely trying to more mindfully do that for myself.  I am 35. I weigh more now than I did when I was 18. But I can still say, "You're beautiful. You're enough. You look great. "

Don't Miss a Beat.
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Paige Clark Perkinson on Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/vpclark/

Original Music for Let Perfect Burn by Eleri Ward
https://www.instagram.com/eleriward/