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. “Although it may sound absurd now, nobody else witnessed it in this manner.
She borrowed about $150,000 for construction and paid $20,000 for an acre of land.
Her children helped build their 3,500-square-foot home; the eldest was only two years old at the time and the youngest was seventeen.
Since there was no running water on the property, her 11-year-old daughter Jada had to use buckets to carry water from the neighbor’s pond. Her son Drew assisted her in creating the plans. After that, she combined it with concrete bags weighing eighty pounds to create 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.
“Anything is possible for you if I, a 110-pound computer programmer, can build a whole house,” she exclaimed.
She continued, stating, “Select one goal and stick to it. Choose a big project you’ve always wanted to do, start small, and take the others who also need to recover with you. That has a great deal of power
This isn’t it one of the most amazing tales you’ve heard recently?
