Make lemonade if life gives you lemons, so the saying goes. While it is true that nothing is truly impossible if we set our minds to something and work very hard to attain it, as we all know, this is easier said than done.
Cara Brookins’ marriage turned out to be abusive. Being a mother of five, she knew she had to shield her children from the toxic environment they were raised in, so she packed up her children and moved out of her husband’s house. How did she manage to do that? by drawing her own construction plans and watching YouTube videos that showed how to do different building tasks, like setting up a foundation, running a gas line, plumbing, and building walls. That sounds incredible, doesn’t it?
She admits that it has always been impossible now that she has given it some thought.
Cara, a computer programmer analyst, couldn’t afford to buy a house big enough for all of her children when she started building her family’s new home in 2007, so she came up with the plan to build it from the ground up.
It felt like, “if anyone were in our situation, they would do this,” according to Cara. “I know it sounds crazy right now, but this is how nobody else saw it.”
She purchased $20,000 for an acre of land and borrowed roughly $150,000 for development.
Her kids, the youngest of whom was seventeen and the oldest barely two, assisted in the construction of their 3,500-square-foot house.
Jada, her 11-year-old daughter, had to use buckets to carry water from the neighbor’s pond because there was no running water on the property. Drew, her son, helped her with the planning. Then she mixed it with eighty-pound bags of concrete to make the foundation mortar.
Every day after school, the kids would come to the location and lend a hand. For the most challenging jobs, this determined mother hired a part-time firefighter with building experience for $25 per hour. She remembered that he was “a step ahead of us in terms of knowledge.”
On March 31, 2009, the family at last moved into Inkwell Manor, named in honor of Cara’s dream of becoming a writer.
“We were embarrassed that building our own shelter was our only option,” Cara said. Although it wasn’t something we were especially proud of, it turned out to be the best thing I could have done for myself.
“If I, a 110-pound computer programmer, can build an entire house, then anything is possible for you,” she yelled.
She went on, saying, “Pick one objective and follow through on it. Take the others who also require recovery with you, start small, and choose a large project you’ve always wanted to complete. That is extremely powerful.
This isn’t it one of the most amazing tales you’ve heard recently?
