Episodes
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Last May, Juno Ishida and Eliza Hope Duran joined Samantha Paige for an honest conversation about living beyond the construct of a gender binary. In this special episode, Juno, a trans male university student, and Eliza, a gender fluid prize-winning poet, share their views about the boxes that society places us in around our bodies, gender and sexuality. They highlight what it means to navigate life beyond the gender binary and add insight and perspective to the experience of expressing one’s identity in a manner that lines up who we are on the inside with who we are out in the world. This powerful discussion touches upon what it means to lead an authentic life, how we take care of ourselves and ask for needed support in the face of judgement and how we find inner strength and connection when external, societal beliefs can make us internalize doubt and unworthiness.
In light of the recent leak of President Trump’s memo regarding his administration’s plans to narrowly define gender as a biological, immutable condition determined by genitalia at birth, the time is now to be discussing the historical and current violence that trans, gender non-conforming and non-binary individuals have and continue to endure on a daily basis.
Thank you to Juno and Eliza for bravely and boldly opening up with their own stories. Thank you to the Get Lit team for hosting the recording of this podcast at their Los Angeles studio. For more information on Get Lit, please visit getlit.org.
N.B.: During the recording, we refer to Eliza as Erika, which was the name they were using at the time. They have since adopted Eliza.
Please visit our website, lastcutproject.com, for more information on this interview and ways to support the trans, non-conforming and non-binary communities.
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Samantha Paige and Last Cut Photographer Lisa Field reflect on the second season of Last Cut Conversations. They discuss the universal threads shared across the many diverse conversations, and the notable moments that made a lasting impression as well. Each Last Cut Conversation continues to be unique and powerful in its own way, but each season also organically presents lessons that relate to us all. This season’s overarching theme was freedom, which was clearly defined by each guest uniquely and beautifully. These conversations highlighted the power of voice, creativity and vision in the healing process and as a means of activism and service in the world. We covered many powerful stories of trauma, loss and change, as well as our innate ability to overcome and inspire through our personal growth. Samantha and Lisa's conversation reminds us that while each of our stories differs in detail, we connect beyond the particulars through our humanity and common desires for love, connection and community.
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Missing episodes?
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Zoe Buckman is a multi-disciplinary visual artist, activist and mother. Originally from East London, she now lives and works in New York. Buckman powerfully weaves together art and activism into pieces that draw viewers in with aesthetically pleasing beauty, while offering an undercurrent that inspires deeper contemplation on political issues. Buckman speaks to the process of transforming what she sees happening in the world around her into thought-provoking works of art. With creations such as “Let Her Rave,” “Mostly It’s Just Uncomfortable” and “Every Curve,” her work beautifully weaves together the feminine with the fierce, sparking conversation around feminism, mortality and equality. Buckman shares how her activism informs her art and how both inform her parenting of her young daughter. After admiring Zoe Buckman’s work for years, Samantha Paige was excited to sit down with her to talk about art, activism, the shared experience of mothering daughters in this moment in time and the power of last cuts to wake us up and foster change.
To learn more about Zoe Buckman’s visual art and upcoming projects, including her 2018 LA installation with Art Production Fund, please visit zoebuckman.com or @zoebuckman on Instagram and Twitter.
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Samantha Paige first heard of Pidgeon Pagonis’ powerful story of growing up Intersex through a video clip produced by Human Rights Watch. Paige wanted to learn more about Pagonis’ experience of discovering they were Intersex at age 19 and the subsequent deconstruction of a believed identity, gender and (false) cancer diagnosis. In this raw, vulnerable episode, Pagonis discusses a childhood defined by a struggle to conform to a familial and societal definition of “normal.” They had been told a believed, yet constructed story of a childhood cancer diagnosis, built around the notable differences in their body and development as well as the scars on their body. It was not until Pagonis attended an advanced psychology class in college where Intersex was outlined that they discovered they had actually been born with the very condition being taught. Pagonis underwent three medically unnecessary surgeries at age 1, 4 and 11, as well as years of traumatizing interactions with the medical world. They share here about their rediscovery of self as a nonbinary, queer activist and filmmaker in the context of reality over protective lies. Pagonis speaks beautifully to the universal experience of living with trauma and creating a life that feels like one’s own.
To connect with Pidgeon and learn more about their work, please visit their website at http://www.pidgeonismy.name or their Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/pidgeo_n. To view Pidgeon’s powerful documentary film, “The Son I Never Had: Growing Up Intersex,” please contact them directly through their website.
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Kyle Knight is a researcher in the LGBT rights program at Human Rights Watch in New York City. A former media journalist who chose to do reporting work with more policy follow through and impact, Kyle is a brilliant motivator for change. Samantha Paige sat down with Knight to discuss the details of his most recent Human Rights Watch report entitled, “I Want to be Like Nature Made Me: Medically Unnecessary Surgeries on Intersex Children in the US.” Written in partnership with interACT, an organization that advocates for the human rights of children born with intersex traits, this detailed report documents the medically unnecessary surgeries done on many intersex children, who make up close to 2% of the US population. Intersex people are born with any of several variations in sex characteristics including chromosomes, gonads, sex hormones, or genitals. Knight eloquently outlines the unethical treatment of many intersex patients, the lasting psychological and physical effects of these unnecessary surgeries and the proposed policy change to create a kinder, safer environment for intersex patients in the medical system and beyond. This episode touches upon important issues related to gender, nonbinary identity, parenting, health advocacy and societal biases and norms.
Prior to joining the LGBT rights program at Human Rights Watch, Knight was a fellow at the Williams Institute of the University of California at Los Angeles and a Fulbright scholar in Nepal. As a journalist he has worked for Agence France-Presse in Nepal and for IRIN, the UN’s humanitarian news service, reporting from Burma, Papua New Guinea, Timor-Leste, Bangladesh, Malaysia, and Indonesia.
For more information on the Human Rights Watch and interACT Intersex report, please visit https://www.hrw.org/report/2017/07/25/i-want-be-nature-made-me/medically-unnecessary-surgeries-intersex-children-us. For more information on interACT, please visit https://interactadvocates.org.
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Samantha Paige met Lily Mandelbaum and Elisa Goodkind, the creators of Style Like U, at their “True Style is What’s Underneath: The Self-Acceptance Revolution” book signing in Los Angeles. Just weeks later, Lily and Elisa interviewed Paige for their Dispelling Beauty Myths video series with Allure magazine in New York. In this interview, Paige was excited to switch roles and ask the mother-daughter duo powerful questions about their lives. They touch upon life before Style Like U, the last cuts they made to step into this creative endeavor, where they find inspiration for and connection to their work and how they stay open and vulnerable to and during this transformative process. These two women share eloquently and openly about the importance of redefining individuality, the value of staying true to oneself in spite of society’s homogenizing messages and the deep connection all beings share. In the same vulnerable spirit of the intimate docu-style video portraits of Style Like U, Mandelbaum and Goodkind open up with Paige about the importance of always going deeper within oneself in order to make a bolder contribution in the world.
To connect with Lily Mandelbaum and Elisa Goodkind and discover more about Style Like U, please visit stylelikeu.com, Style Like U on YouTube and @stylelikeu on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.
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“I am always refining my truths, and my truths are always changing.” Melinda Alexander
Melinda Alexander, aka Mumu Mansion, sat down with Samantha Paige to speak about love, self-healing, parenting and the gift of learning from life’s most challenging moments. Melinda is an all-around lover, mother, healer and social activist who does women’s work in many forms to heal herself and others. She is dedicated to learning from the internal and external conversation about life, vulnerably and boldly welcoming thousands on her own personal journey. Following the birth of her son and a painful divorce, she revolutionized her life and created a broad platform to show the possibilities born with the willingness to learn from what is not working. Melinda proved to herself that she had the power within to work through anything if she stayed open to extracting the information, and thereby evolution, found in even the most difficult moments. This candid conversation touches upon love, healing, parenthood, race, divorce, trauma, the beauty in the discomfort and the power of transforming pain.
For more information on Melinda Alexander’s powerful work, please visit melinda-alexander.com and @mumumansion on Instagram.
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“You are what you can mentally achieve, not what you perceive your body capable of.” Charlie Linville
Samantha Paige sits down with her friend and inspiration, Charlie Linville, to talk about life-changing last cuts, overcoming trauma, perseverance, adventure and inspiration on the other side of pain. In 2011, while in Afghanistan, Charlie, an ex-Marine Sergeant, was injured on a mission to dismantle improvised explosive devices (IED’s) as an Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) Technician. After 14 surgeries over 18 months, his injured foot was not healing. Charlie made the ultimate last cut by proactively deciding to amputate his right leg below the knee. Soon after that decision, he committed to training with The Heroes Project and became the first combat wounded amputee to climb Mt. Everest in 2016. Their first attempt was canceled after an avalanche killed 16 Sherpas in 2014. In 2015, the second effort was abandoned when Nepal was devastated by a huge earthquake. Charlie’s combined strength and humility have inspired Paige since before they first met on an Equinox video shoot in 2016. This conversation speaks to the universal importance of sharing our stories and trusting in the power of connection to heal ourselves and others.
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Samantha Paige sat down with bespoke leather worker and qualified saddler, Mia Sabel of Sabel Saddlery, in her East London studio. The two talked about how one creates a life that feels like one’s own and the freedom found on the other side of our biggest last cuts. Sabel shares her journey from an existence ruled by an overpowering corporate job with no time or space for loved ones, nature or connection to a more balanced life filled with creativity, horse riding, travel and solid relationships. Speaking to the power of the significant decisions, or the last cuts, we make in life, Sabel illuminates the idea that change is most powerful when we elect it, rather than when we react to the things happening to or around us. She honestly and vulnerably speaks to the darkness that can occur when we are disconnected from ourselves and the bravery required to leap from a known state of being to a new one.
For more information on Mia Sabel’s beautiful custom leather work and workshops, please visit sabelsaddlery.com.
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Samantha Paige recently sat down in London with Lily Parrott and Laura Stahnkhe, two of the founders of Migration Collective. Migration Collective is a group of dynamic and creative women who aim to challenge the current, narrow rhetoric on migration. Through events, film festivals and soon cooking programs, they seek to focus on inclusion, what is shared rather than what separates people. This episode highlights the simultaneously increasing number of humans voluntarily and involuntarily leaving their homelands and the rapid rise of nationalist rhetoric around refugees, migrants and foreigners. Using the power of art and expression to examine the experiences and reality within migration, displacement and diaspora, Migration Collective’s founders are broadening the conversation around these issues and facilitating connection by highlighting the humanity behind every story. Parrott, an American, and Stahnke, a Dutch-Italian, share their own personal stories of living in the UK, the potential impact of Brexit and why they have dedicated their lives to changing the dialogue around migration.
For more information on Migration Collective and their upcoming London Migration Film Festival, please visit migrationcollective.com.
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Sofia Lindvall was born and raised in Harads, Sweden (population: ~600), just 60 kilometers south of the Arctic Circle. She is a trained stunt person and daughter to Kent Lindvall and Britta Jonsson-Lindvall, the founders of the TreeHotel. The TreeHotel is a collection of 7 unique tree houses, designed by Scandanavia’s leading architects, where guests can sleep 4 to 6 meters up in the trees and commune with nature. In the middle of untouched Swedish forest, Samantha Paige gathered with Sofia to hear the story behind the TreeHotel and the love of nature that inspired her family to create this magical place. Honoring and embracing nature is the key to the whole TreeHotel experience; incredibly, no trees were cut during its construction. Sofia shares about growing up and living in a small town in a time of globalization and urbanization, why she left for a bigger city and what motivated her to return after one year. This conversation highlights the beauty of strong inter-human connections, the importance of living in harmony with our natural environment and the power of slowing down our pace in life. For more information on the Lindvall family and the TreeHotel, please visit treehotel.se.
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“For me, it’s [freedom] about taking it as a gift that I have been given privilege, I’ve been given certain assets, certain abilities. How I am going to use those to affect others and to make my life, honestly, a life of meaning? That’s how I define freedom.” Arthur Gross-Schaefer
Arthur Gross-Schaefer is a man who literally wears many hats. He is a husband, father, rabbi, lawyer, CPA, professor, mediator and murder mystery author, amongst other roles. What comes through most beautifully in his conversation with Samantha Paige is how he threads his commitment to honoring tolerance, kindness, thoughtfulness, vision and intelligence through all he does. Gross-Schaefer shares in detail how he works with his students and community members to establish conversation and connection with controversial and polarizing issues, such as DACA, racism, climate change, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and party politics. He speaks to the importance of creating a personal mission statement, knowing your core values and remembering to find humor and humanity in all we do. Gross-Schaefer opens up about losing one of his sons. Avi Schaefer, to a drunk driver, and how that painful loss inspired the Avi Schaefer Fund, which actively works to promote peaceful dialogue and empower young people to bridge intolerance. For more information on the Avi Schaefer Fund, please visit avischaeferfund.org.
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Samantha Paige dialogues with her dear friend, professional soccer player Annie Hawkins, in this touching episode about living life from the heart. Hawkins opens up about losing her father to pancreatic cancer six years ago and how his passing, and possibly more profoundly, how he lived the last months of his life, inspired her to deepen her own dedication to a meaningful, service-filled, and connected existence. She shares what soccer has taught her over the years, her unique relationship to time and how she has opened her heart and schedule to traveling the world to connect, explore and inspire others to live their fullest lives, while remaining radically true to herself. Paige and Hawkins also address the importance of community and friendship when one is living a life outside of the box.
To stay connected with Annie Hawkins, please visit her website, www.the10influence.com, and follow her on Instagram and Twitter @anniehawkins.
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Jenna Tosh, CEO of Planned Parenthood California Central Coast, speaks to her dedication to her work and to her other major role as conscious parent to three. Tosh oversees 5 Planned Parenthood locations and is part of the team advocating for health care access for over 800,000 individuals annually in California. In the wake of the ongoing attempts to reform Obamacare, she opens up about why she chose this career, what she is passionate about and how she takes care of herself, and encourages her staff to do the same, to stay focused and energized. Tosh also beautifully shares about her hopes for her children and how she is teaching them to be the change through kindness and tolerance in action and words. For more information on Jenna Tosh’s work with Planned Parenthood, please visit www.ppcentralcoast.org or Planned Parenthood California Central Coast on Facebook.
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In this moving episode, Samantha Paige reunites with her childhood friend, Jennifer Yashari, who opens up about living with hereditary inclusion body myopathy (HIBM), a rare degenerative disease that causes muscle cells to weaken progressively. Diagnosed in her early 30’s, Yashari, a psychiatrist, has learned to cope with the massive loss delivered with the disease and all the subsequent losses that have come in its wake over time. She started a blog, “Living with HIBM,” in 2011, and writes beautifully and with a piercing rawness about the experience of a living with an ever-evolving disability that affects how she moves, parents and interacts with the world. Yashari details the importance of mourning each and every loss fully, so that we can then do our best to be present in life, and fostering strong, loving relationships to support us on the ride. In telling her own story, she provides guidance and vision for how to speak with others about differences and how to maintain a connected mindfulness in the process. For more information on Jennifer Yashari, please visit her website, www.jenniferyasharimd.com, and her blog, www.livingwithhibm.com.
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Mallika Chopra joins Samantha Paige for a powerful conversation about living life with intent and conscious parenting. In her humble and authentic manner of sharing, Chopra details her self-defined "somewhat messy journey" to deeper purpose, peace and joy in all aspects of life. With anecdotes from her life and conversations with her father, Deepak Chopra, and friend, Eckhart Tolle, she models how we can set clear intentions to create greater balance in all areas of our lives. She shares her belief that conscious parenting requires mindfulness in speech and actions with our children as well as a continuous reflection on our deepest desires for the journey as parent. We discussed how she is raising two empowered, engaged feminists through her family's honest sharing of what is happening in the world and how she is always modeling the need to connect with self in order to navigate everything with grounded confidence. Mallika Chopra is a mother, author, speaker and entrepreneur. Her books include “Living with Intent: My Somewhat Messy Journey to Purpose, Peace and Joy,” “100 Promises to My Baby” and “100 Questions from My Child.” She is the founder of Intent.com, an online community where members can share their dreams and aspirations, and receive support from others to do the same. For more information on Mallika’s work, please visit mallikachopra.com (@mallikachopra on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter) and Intent.com (@intentdotcom on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter).
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Get Lit Poets Monique Mitchell and Vanessa Tahay bravely and vulnerably share how reading, writing and speaking poetry has paved a path to freedom and happiness in their lives. In this raw and moving conversation, these two powerful women detail where they came from and the ways in which they have used their art and voice to cultivate freedom, self love, empowerment and joy from pain and hardship. Mitchell, a Get Lit graduate and now Get Lit Education Coordinator, and Tahay, a recent Cleveland High graduate and 2017 Classic Slam winner, hold nothing back and boldly recite their own original poetry. Their raw eloquence and strength give me hope for the future. For more on Get Lit, please visit getlit.org or @getlitpoet on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. For more on Monique Mitchell, please visit www.mnqmtchll.com or @mnqmtchll on Instagram and Twitter. For more on Vanessa Tahay, please visit @vanessa_tahay on Instagram and Twitter, or Vanessa Tahay on Facebook..
Get Lit was founded by Diane Luby Lane in 2006 in Los Angeles. It started in two high schools, Fairfax & Walt Whitman, and now offers its program in almost 100! Get Lit-Words Ignite fuses classic and spoken word poetry to increase teen literacy and cultivate enthusiastic learners emboldened to inspire social consciousness in diverse communities.
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Santa Barbara, California based Pilates instructor and dancer, Alejandro Ameijeiras shares his long, sometimes dark, road to personal acceptance and embodiment of his sexuality, sensitivity and inner power. Born in Communist Cuba to prominent Diplomats in 1963, he grew up in a culture, beautiful in many ways, but far from accepting of individual differences. He studied first as a professional swimmer, then in military school and eventually as a dancer. Being the son of a top General was at times in contrast to who he was and knew he wanted to be. Alejandro left Cuba in his late teens to train with the Bolshoi ballet in Moscow and traveled with the Tropicana troupe in East Germany and Italy right before the Berlin Wall came down. After further exploring his dancing and modeling career in Cuba, he finally left for Panama in 1995 and arrived in Miami on Christmas Eve in 1997. Years, and much dedicated internal work, later, he has created a dream life in California with a loving husband, thriving Pilates business and ever-evolving inner peace, due to his ongoing dedication to personal growth and self discovery.
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Model Sara Mills, best known as “Sara on the Internet,” reached widespread international acclaim with a viral YouTube video highlighting her twerking her breasts to Mozart. Her global Internet fame focused greatly on her silicone implant enhanced breasts, as well as her tattoos and distinct voice. However, along the way, Mills has also openly shared about her relationship to her body, autoimmune ailments that increased with the implants and an autism diagnosis she received two years ago. Finally, in 2016, after moving towards a healthier lifestyle in an effort to feel better, Mills opted for an explant surgery. Not concerned about what effect this decision would have on her following, she did what she does and made a YouTube video announcement. Sara’s direct and outwardly vocal style around her choices is what drew Samantha Paige to her story. When they finally met in person to share this conversation in LA, Mills shared so much more with Paige, including her take on the effects of chronic illness on creativity and friendship, “social inoculation” with autism, body positivity, the reasoning behind her tattoos and her take on societal norms. It is no surprise that her strong, clear voice and intelligence around these issues have actually garnered her a much larger following, far compensating for anyone, or anything, lost with the implants.
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Artist Samantha Paige kicks off Season 2 of the Last Cut Conversations podcast with an honest reflection on this tenuous moment in history and the need for human connection beyond technology. She shares her belief in the importance of raw self-inquiry as a means to healing, connecting and growing in spite of what is happening around us. Samantha speaks to freedom, Season 2’s theme, and how, even though this word means something different to each of us, there is great beauty in the art of reflection and conversation around what makes us individually feel connected and free.
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