Cara Brookins found strength in building a new home for her family of four from the ground up using only YouTube tutorials. After escaping an abusive marriage, she couldn’t afford a property large enough to house her four growing children. Instead, she purchased an acre of land and construction supplies.
The family then turned to YouTube for its resourceful instructional videos. On this steep learning curve, they hand mixed mortar, safely operated nail guns, and framed their own walls among many other new and challenging tasks. They laid it down brick-by-brick, building up strength and safety as a family creating their new home.
Not long ago, Cara felt trapped and powerless in her situation of domestic abuse. Eventually coming to terms that there was no fixing this prison-like home environment she took a leap and moved her four children, then aged 17, 15, 11, and 2, to a tiny house outside of Little Rock, Arkansas. The idea came to her while driving past a home destroyed by a tornado. While observing the exposed framework, she thought to herself she could build a wall – maybe even start from scratch.
She invested all her money in the ambitious DIY project banding the kids together in an impressive show of strength and will.
“Once I had bought all these supplies and they were all piled up, there was no way out,” Brookins explained to CBS News. “There wasn’t enough money to pay anyone to put them together. There was no plan B.”
The family pored over countless YouTube video tutorials on different methods of approaching everything from framing windows to foundations before deciding what might work best for them.
“They were all in, my biggest fear was that my teenagers would wake up and say, ‘No, I’m not doing this.’ And it never happened.
It was the first time they had felt any sort of power, any sort of control over their lives. And they knew how much they needed it.” – Brookins tells CBS News proudly of her kids.
The family realized their challenging dream after a mere nine months, doing absolutely everything themselves. Brookins looks to the physical manifestation that took place, the magic of transformation in their journey of rebuilding, with gratitude. For more on her inspiring story see her recently released book Rise, How A House Built A Family.
Featured Image via Cara Brookins’ website
