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Just another life event

Here we are, standing and kissing in front of our new house!

When I was in my early 30s, I learned a very valuable lesson from my loving ex-husband.  I learned that yes, I could indeed be a homeowner.  See, people like me didn’t own homes.  We rented apartments.  In neighborhoods that were a bit nebulous.
My husband at the time was having none of that, and I am so grateful for that lesson from him.
Fast forward a bit, and when we got divorced, I bought my own home, on my own.  My first! I was going to live there forever.  It was actually two buildings, right next door to one another.  My home in one building, and my photography studio in the other.  
It was perfect, and I built gardens, and enlarged my photography business and all was well and successful for a a very long time.  I had a tough time with maintenance on those two buildings, as they were built in 1947, but I loved the character of those old buildings and I learned a lot about carpentry and roofing and flooring and all sorts of other home maintenance kinds of things.  My dad bought me a power tool for Christmas two years in a row, and I was ecstatic!
Fast forward some more, and the recession hit and the photography industry changed and just about everything else in my life changed and while I owned the commercial building free and clear, I still had a mortgage on the house, and it foreclosed.  I simply could not make the payments.  I tried everything.  I tried restructuring the loan, short selling, everything I could think of.  I kept getting a no with everything I tried.  If you are familiar with the stages of grief (bargaining, acceptance, denial, anger, shock, depression) you will understand it when I say to this day I have a bit of bargaining going on.  Maybe if I had tried this or that, I tell myself.  I’ve already gone through the depression and the guilt and let those puppies go.  And the reality is that today I am in extreme gratitude for that loss, for I would not be here today had that not happened.  I hung on longer than most, but on New Year’s Day of 2013 I moved down to a little studio apartment on an 80 acre horse ranch in the Carson Valley.
I was in grad school, studying for a new career, and it soon became very clear to me that I needed to sell the commercial building, so I did.
Fast forward a bit more, my husband Floyd and I get together and decide we need to live in a bigger place than a studio, as nice as the ranch was, so we rent.  I find myself back in the land of renters and while I love the place where we live, renting has is drawbacks.  First of all there is the way we are treated by the rental company.  The first one was ok, they treated us respectfully and promptly responded to any service needs.  Then the owner changed rental companies.  This one is horrible.  They send out nasty emails containing thinly veiled threats about caring for the home, don’t respond promptly to calls, and are just plain rude and disrespectful.  I began longing to own my own home again.  I began to dream of having a place where I could plant my garden and maybe have some chickens and other critters and paint my walls anything but white and nest and set down roots.
So, I did what I know works.  I began within to manifest my own home.  I made a list of everything I ever wanted in a home, with great detail.  I visualized this list.  I affirmed it and I affirmed what it would feel like when I owned my own home.  I set my prayer partners on the task to know that this would manifest in my life.  I realized that I wanted my own garden, so I cultivated a very small patch in the yard in the rental and planted flowers.  How we do one thing is how we do everything and when I set my mind to something, I am consumed with it and I rarely take no for an answer.  It is how I have gone so far in life, how I have been able to do what others say is impossible, over and over again.  I can and do achieve the impossible, regularly.
Today, we found out we will be home owners once again.  This house is perfect in every way and has plenty of room for all our desires.   I can plant my gardens and still have room for critters.  Floyd can have his boot shop.  I can have my office and maybe one day a meeting/class room space, in the back 40.  Because this home sits on 2.5 acres.  We’ve achieved what some people said was impossible.  It hasn’t been easy.  I’m self employed, in a new career, with new sources of income.  Floyd is retired.  We have submitted no less than 48 various financial documents to the lender, completed 14 other to do items required by them, paid 1000’s of dollars in ernest money and inspection fees, and to top it all off, after we made the offer on the home, and it was accepted, we discovered that a court had to approve the sale, due to some sort of probate.
Today the court approved the sale, and we close escrow in just a couple of days.  
Happy dance!  This waiting game has been an experience fraught with alternating bouts of incredible tension, hope and excitement, doubt, tension, then hope and excitement again.  WOOGIE WOOGIE WOOGIE!
We will be moving soon!
I can’t tell you how full circle this seems.  I can’t tell you how this feels like both the ending and the beginning of a cycle that began with incredible loss and change.  Imagine losing a home, a business, moving, switching communities, and going back to school to learn a new career, all in the time frame of about 3 years.  According to the shrinks who like to test such things, I should have been in the nut house.  I’m stronger than that, but I did go through a fairly heavy duty grieving process with no small amount of the return of my old companion PTSD and that even older companion of low self worth.  Most of that is gone again now.  I’ve done a lot of inner work in these last few years.
So now we begin anew.  This new home is symbolic of a new life in many more ways than just a different place to live.  I’ve been flailing a bit, trying to figure out my niche in my new career.  So many different directions I could have gone.  I feel that solidifying, I know where I want to go now with this and now that I have a direction in which I want to go, I’m headed there with all the obsession and drive that I have done everything else that has allowed me to wildly succeed where others fail.  I’ve got some land to play with, and so I am plotting and planning footprints for my veggie and flower gardens.  I’ve been getting rid of stuff, decluttering both mentally and physically.  I’ve convinced Floyd that it is ok to get rid of things, and he has grudgingly gotten rid of a few items. 
We will be moving soon!  I put up a Christmas tree, because I can’t imagine this season without one.  Floyd was puzzled by this.  He could not see the sense in putting up a tree when we might be moving soon.  I told him, “that’s easy.  I have the tree here.  When it comes time to move, I’ll pick that puppy up, put it in the toy hauler, move it to the new house, and plop it down in the living room and plug it in.”  He still is doubtful.  He hasn’t yet learned how much possibilities there are in things. Hell, I might even reinstitute an old tradition of mine, to keep a tree up year round, because I like the symbolism of the lights and because I like the beauty of them.  One thing at a time.
I just wanted to share with you this journey.  If you want something, don’t listen to the naysayers and the society and the others who say it can’t be done.  Just quietly go about your business and it shall be done.  Begin within and set it up that way, and then move outward with the action, and it shall be done.