Adding to the Bones
One thing I will never pretend about is how tough this homesteading-from-scratch journey has been. On so many levels: less than 100 square feet of tight-space living in a stripped down to the bone environment with few amenities and creature comforts; the financial stress that comes along with paying as we build; the natural stressors of raising a young, spirited child, and both of us having jobs. Among other variables, there are many days that the bare bones feel like fracturing and we can't take it all anymore.
The majority of our home building work until recently has been at the macro level. The structural big stuff: Framing, sheathing, windows & doors. In the big picture of time, we spent from May 2017 to February 2018 (9 months) working on the skeleton of our house so to speak. Now we're finally putting some meat on the bones and it wakes up light in dark places for me where hope hasn't lived for a pretty long time.
I can't help but feel this home building journey is paralleling our own personal journey as well. It's not the first time I've admitted that parenting has been a struggle for us. This new year in recovery for me has brought more engagement: for me with asking for a sponsor, and some days, family life is so hard that we've renewed our commitment to try therapy again starting this week. Maybe starting over is like the path our building is taking. Realizing the bare bones of the structure we have built and slowly fleshing out the rest to get to a healthy place, a healthy home.
Solid Hope
[Note: the rest of this post was written a little more than 3 months later]
After 4 months of fleshing out the bones, we had walls. Walls with skin. This aspect of our building has probably taken the longest. A lot of tedious measuring, cutting, and fitting, and all the do-overs. I am continuously impressed with David's innate ability to just push through. If all this were just up to me, I would've given up the second day. But four months of relentless work and we were ready for making our first design choice together: wall paint. But that's a whole other story for a whole other day.
I guess the earlier writing of this post was so difficult to put down and admit, that I never published it. There are stretches of time when I feel really energized and inspired to contribute to the documentation and blog of our experience, and there are others where I need to focus more on myself in the now and not be so reflective. Looking back on the words from July I can see the parallels between how I felt emotionally then (and now) and where we were in our building process. I view this whole undertaking as an intentional shift; a major upheaval of growth. A commitment to becoming a better person. Learning to show up for myself, our family, and our community fully and more myself.
