“You have got to lighten the f**k up!”

The idea for this blog came to me years ago before my beloved left our relationship (a story that will unfold as you and I get to know each other).  

What matters now is that he and I had a magical time when he was on a trip to Spain and we stayed connected by writing. Long, gorgeous, vulnerable letters across the ocean. OK, well, it was email, but the fact that we were farther apart than ever and had an ocean and way more time zones between us made it super romantic.

The high point was his trip to La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. He had fallen in love with both me and Gaudi and got it all mixed up and I could see it in his photos and hear it in his words:

Light. LIGHT. Up. UP. For God. And everything. 
La Segrada Familia
Mind-blowing. 

I was as intoxicated as he was. I got fixated on one of his photos of the ceiling of that cathedral. It was full of colors, textures, light and shadow, humor, youth, age...it was All the Things. And it was Up. Gaudi designed it so that everyone has to look up and beyond to see the very best parts...a playground of divine and human. The whole thing still gets me drunk with love and God and magic.

“You have got to lighten the fuck up, Ward,” is something I’ve always said to myself when I get too serious or freaked out about things going on around me. My beloved thought it was great that I called myself out and he started calling himself out, too. It can make things funny really fast and at the very least it brings perspective. It gets me out of my own way, pulls me up enough to take a breath, resets my mood. It has been a key phrase in the navigation of my grief. Getting some perspective helps everything.

I suppose I was a little disappointed at first to find out I didn’t write like a novelist, but I’m coming to terms. My writing group told me once that I write like a photographer and capture images in a dense collection of words and then move one. After finding this out and thinking, “Lighten up, Paige,” I think I’m in fall-back-and-regroup mode and am going to throw away the caution and just get busy. 

It all came together from there.  Perspective really is everything!