Think Big

I started making plans for my do-over by drawing up plans to renovate the unfinished basement in the large home my soon-to-be-ex-husband and I had built in the middle of an 80-acre piece of land in northeast Missouri. There, with a little creative thinking, I could put in two rooms with private bathrooms, a large open dining/sitting room and a small but very efficient kitchen and laundry to serve the bed & breakfast. One bedroom would have two windows on the east side and a pair of French doors opening out to a huge patio and the yard. The second bedroom would have a bank of four windows looking out onto the terrace and yard. The French doors in the sitting area would be the B&B entrance and room to take breakfast or whatever meals I served outside when the weather was nice. 

I created my business plan and knew, because the ex and I had been the general contractors for the house construction, how much it would cost to do what I wanted -- right down to the last sheetrock screw. My marketing plan was detailed which was to be expected. After all, I own my own one-woman marketing consulting agency. Even though I could do most of the work myself and had the budget honed down to a very modest cost, turning the profit I needed within the timeframe required to be able to start paying the massive home mortgage within a certain period of time was going to be a challenge. It meant that I would never be able to afford to travel elsewhere because I would be tied to my home and my business there. That was acceptable in the beginning. I loved my home and had poured my heart and soul into it. The thought of leaving it behind broke my heart. 

During the beginning of the divorce negotiations, I visited friends in Tulsa. They had spent their recent vacation in Tuscany and wanted to show me photos. The villa they had rented was beautiful and the countryside breathtaking. It was in the middle of this presentation of photos that my friend turned to me and said, in his typical matter-of-fact way, "I understand why you want to have a B&B. You'd be good at that. But why Kirksville? Why not someplace like Tuscany?" 

My first inclination was to bristle. After all, I couldn't bear leaving my home. But his words kept running through my head during my nine-hour drive back to that home. The next day, I wandered around my home, the yard with all of the gardens I had built with love and sweat and more than a little blood at times, then sat, silent, on the massive deck that overlooked nothing but field and trees in total quiet. This is beautiful, I thought. I love this place. I'm connected to it. I just can't bear to let it go. I have to figure out how to make my plan work.

My conviction was obvious to my friends who encouraged me at every turn. One of my best friends actually wrote me a large check and told me to use it to start work on my dream and just pay her back whenever I could. She was so enthralled by my determination that she wanted to see me realize my dream. What an incredible friend. I forged ahead, bolstered by the confidence she instilled in me with her phenomenal gesture. 


Then, I received the first response to my divorce-settlement proposal. Although I had already told the near-ex that I wanted to keep the house and the land and he had seemed okay with that, he now told me he would never give up the land because his father has farmed it. No, I could keep the house and a tiny spit of land around it and he would keep the rest.


He might as well have built a 40-foot-high wall around me and that house. And it was at that moment of reading his words while sitting at the beautiful kitchen island I had always wanted, looking out the sunroom windows of the room I had painted and decorated with such care that I looked around me and, for the first time ever during the nightmare marriage of the past four-plus years, realized that I could leave it all behind. It was, after all, just a house.

At that moment, I started to think big.