BW 162: “When the Dream Isn’t Clear Yet (But You Move Anyway)”
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[00:00:00] Welcome to episode number 162 of the Brave Widow Show. Guys. We have 15 people who have enrolled in the Brave Widow Academy, and I'm excited. We are kicking off on Monday, August 11th. So if you have not enrolled, if you have been on the fence, this is the time. If you're the person who waits until the last minute.
This is the time to enroll in the Brave Widow Academy and in six months from now to go from feeling lost, to feeling clear, to having a clear path from going lonely, to feeling connected and seen, and to go from unsure and second guessing every decision. To feeling confident in navigating the unknown and in navigating some of these decisions.
I would love to see you in the academy. This [00:01:00] is not a huge group. This is not hundreds of people. You're not gonna be lost in a sea of people. This is intentionally a small group so that we get to know each other, we get to connect together and ultimately walk the journey together. It's a small group so that I can give you one-on-one individual feedback.
Personal attention and be able to respond to you during the week if there are things that come up. So I would love to see you there to sign up. You can go to brave widow.com. It's right on the homepage. And if you want a little help deciding if this is right for you, you can always go to brave widow.com and schedule a consult.
And on the consult I walk you through a set of questions that I have. To best understand where you are in your journey and to help show you how the Academy would be able to support you. And ultimately help you [00:02:00] move forward. It's free. There's no pressure. I don't try to convince you. I call my people to me.
I attract the people who need me. To me. I am not coming from a place of need. So I do not need to convince anyone. My goal is to help articulate who the academy is for, what all we do, and to make sure that people know that it's there so that they can get the support that they need.
Six months from now, we are gonna be in February. Think about that. We are going to have just gone through a slew of holidays and milestones and times that are really tough for widows. And so what I would like to see is every widow being fully supported. Surrounded in a container that elevates them and equips them with the tools they need to navigate grief, to navigate this weird, [00:03:00] awkward, new life now, and ultimately be able to build a life that they actually love.
So again, to join us, go to brave widow.com. I would love to see you in the academy.
Welcome to The Brave Widow Show. I'm your host, Emily Tanner. The Brave Widow Academy is open for enrollment right now. If you're a widow, feeling stuck, lost or just ready to start living again, but don't know where to start, this is your next step. It's the only program that gives you a clear proven process to rebuild your identity, your confidence, and your life after loss.
To learn more or to enroll today, just head to bravewidow.com/academy. I'll see you on the inside. Sometimes we don't get the full picture before we start building a new life. Sometimes we just get a nudge, [00:04:00] a tug, or a whisper. So today I want to share a deeply personal story of how I pursued a dream that has been foggy at best, and what I have learned so far about faith, grief, and rebuilding along the way.
Sometimes a dream doesn't really feel like a dream when you're living it in. The wrong season or in a premature season. I have wanted to live out in the country for as long as I can remember, like as long as I can remember being a kid. My dad was a veterinarian. I sometimes would go and shadow him during the summer.
I loved it. I loved animals. I loved interacting with animals. I got to do some horseback riding. One summer I got to volunteer at a place that did therapy for kids with physical disabilities through horseback riding. And it was just amazing. [00:05:00] Like it felt yes, I need to be around horses. I need to be around animals.
I need to be out on a farm
but sometimes the things that we desire as kids don't happen as quickly as we want, or don't come to fruition as quickly as we want
and so I was 18. I got married 10 days. After I turned 18, I started having kids. I started my career. I went back to school and would do that for many years to ultimately get my master's degree and. I didn't have money for buying a house out in the country and I certainly didn't have time for living out in the country.
But that dream never faded fully away. So over the years we lived in different places. I even moved to the Cincinnati Metro area for three years for work. We lived in a beautiful neighborhood, had an amazing experience of the ideal neighborhood experience. And so over time I would think, why? Why would [00:06:00] I have this dream of living out in the country?
And it's just never gonna come to fruition. It's just never gonna be. Maybe I just need to learn to live. Love living in a neighborhood and enjoying the great things about that, and the fact that living in a neighborhood might feel safer, easier to manage, better sense of community and all of the things.
In 2020, soon after COVID hit, we had the opportunity to move back to Arkansas and we looked online on Zillow
and I spotted this beautiful brick home out in the country on 37 acres. Now, most of the acreage was wooded and hilly, but we spotted some potential where we could set up a hobby farm, like maybe clear out some of the trees. We could have a small pasture, put a horse, maybe a couple donkeys, a couple cows, maybe some things out there.
We saw that the house had potential. We ended up buying that [00:07:00] house and moving there in September of 2020. And for Nathan, this was his dream home that we had two ponds where you could go fishing. It had a big workshop, it had a big pool. It was just, the view was like a million dollar view out on my back porch.
I just could see our house was up on a hill and I could see rolling hills of evergreen trees. On the other side of our backyard, it was so quiet. It just seemed like the perfect getaway, like the perfect escape from city living. And so we moved there and it was great and it worked perfectly. But then in July of 2021, less than a year from when we had moved into this house.
Nathan ended up dying, and all of a sudden I found myself as a solo mom to four teenagers living out in the middle of the woods, about 15 minutes from a small town and about [00:08:00] 45 minutes from a decent, medium sized town. I was traveling nearly every single week for work. Three of my kids weren't old enough to drive on their own yet, or hadn't learned to drive.
And so logistically getting the kids where they needed to go, getting them to their activities, getting them to school, like I even had to drive them to the bus stop. That's how far out we were. Okay. It's not like they just walked out in the morning and got on the bus. So every time I traveled for work, I had to arrange transportation for them to get to school, their activities and that sort of thing.
And I also realized that when you live in the woods, you have limbs that fall, you have trees that fall, and it started to feel unmanageable as we lived there. We had about six or seven acres that we mowed, not brush, hogged. Mowed with a mower, not a push mower, thank goodness. But again, it's very hilly, it's steep, it's rocky.
[00:09:00] There's trees with big roots. And trust me, I have bent mini, a mower blade and driven the mower up on many trees. And it just felt overwhelming. It was very scary when it would snow and ice and I'm trying to get back home. It was far out when it would flood in the nearby area, and it just started to feel like on one hand this was Nathan's dream home and it was beautiful and I loved it.
And on the other hand, this is really a lot to manage, especially for somebody who's working and trying to raise a family on their own.
So the first year after Nathan died was all about survival mode. I was still working, I was raising a family. I was just trying to figure it all out.
During that first year, I really went back and forth on whether or not I wanted to move. I thought for a while I was just gonna stay because I did enjoy it there and it was beautiful and. It [00:10:00] was a place that I enjoyed being and that I could see living there, and I thought eventually I could even turn it into a retreat center because it was a big house.
It had five bedrooms, it was two stories. It was 4,500 square feet, like it was really. An amazing place for entertaining and hosting people. Our kitchen slash dining room was really more like a great room, and so I could easily host 20 to 30 people, no problem finding a place for them to sit and hang out.
So it was great for being able to host people over
but over time, managing the property, managing the house, keeping on top of everything really was just starting to wear on me. And I remember in on Nathan's birthday, so January 30th, 2023, he had been gone about a year and a half. I remember this day I was frustrated. I was frustrated because I had planned [00:11:00] on going and watching the sunrise at the cemetery at his grave site because that's what I did the first birthday that he had.
And when I woke up that morning, we had a big snow that came through, which is actually pretty rare. Rare for where I live. We do get snow maybe once or twice a year, but it's usually not that much and doesn't last long. But this time. It was a big snow. This kid's school was canceled. I was essentially stuck at home and I was grumpy is probably a nice way to say it, because I had planned to go to the cemetery.
That's what I wanted to do, and now all of a sudden I couldn't. And so I remember feeling very sorry for myself, sulking. I sat on the couch, I turned the TV on for some background noise, and I was just like scrolling on my laptop. And I was looking at houses because as I was stuck there, one of the thoughts I had was, see, this is [00:12:00] why I don't wanna live here because I'm not anywhere close to town.
No one can make it out to me. I can't make it out of here if there was an emergency or something that went wrong. So I just, I really don't, I'm ready to be closer to town. So I was looking at houses, which I'd been doing for a few months, just wanting something closer to town, but not liking the layout, not liking where they were located.
I personally like certain things about having a great room, but what I don't like is having a great room where you're trying to have a conversation and. People are in the kitchen doing stuff to me, it's just too distracting. It's just too noisy. I know I'm in the minority. I know people love great rooms.
They're in every house practically, but I love a sitting area, whether it's a den, it's a living room separate, it's a sitting room, whatever it is. Just something that's [00:13:00] not where you feel like you're in the kitchen with people. Microwaving food and cooking and all of that. And so as I'm looking at all these houses, I'm like eh, not great.
Not in a great location, not the layout I want. And I just started scrolling and I saw a piece of land, and this land was 40 acres, so similar size to what I currently had, but it was all pasture land, and it was almost all flat. See where I lived out in the woods. There are deer, there are turkeys. There's wild hogs, there's black bears, all of those things. And so even though I've never seen a bear out there, I know they're there. They show up on the gang cams. And so it was a little scary by myself thinking about driving through the woods or walking through the woods and being afraid that I was gonna come up against a wild hog, which are pretty aggressive.
Or a bear, which. Aggressive or not. Nobody wants to [00:14:00] see that. And so to me, having that much land that required that much maintenance and being in a place where I was afraid of wild animals. Was challenging, but thinking about 40 acres of pasture land that was mostly flat, that was specifically designed for livestock, for cows, for horses, for donkeys, all of those things.
It had a huge pond on it, and just as I looked at it, I'm like, that is so beautiful. Like I just look at this. It's like a little paradise. And the best part. This land was five minutes from my in-law's house who I absolutely love and adore just as if they're part of my immediate family. And it's five minutes from my little town, five minutes from the kids' school, five minutes.
It's super convenient location, but also it's 40 acres of being out in the country, which was amazing to me. And so I remember that day on [00:15:00] Nathan's birthday. That it felt like a gift to me because I found that land and I was like, that's it. I could build a house. What? What if I built a house on this dreamland and I built it exactly the way that I wanted it
two months later. In March of 2023, I would end up buying that 40 acres. Now I bought it, not having a house plan, not knowing what builder I was gonna use, not liking the way most of the floor plans are. And not knowing if I ever did get remarried or if I ever did expand my life, is that person gonna like living there?
Are they gonna the fact I built a house? Are they gonna the house that I built? Those were all thoughts that went through my head, but I knew that I didn't wanna put my life on hold. I decided my dreams and my life. I didn't wanna just keep putting on hold, not knowing all of these other things because I felt like I could figure it out.
Now here I [00:16:00] am looking at 40 acres, not having a tractor. I just bought a truck the year before
not knowing how to take care of land, not knowing how to take care of cattle or any of those things, but I knew what my dream was. I knew what it was that I was looking for, especially when I was able to actually see it. And so as we're going through the closing process, and I'm talking with the owner, he actually had owned 80 acres right there.
He ended up splitting them and selling me 40. And he had owned that land and raised cattle on it for 20 years. So we were having a great conversation and one of the things that I asked him was, look I wanna build a house out here. I don't know how long that's gonna take. I don't want the land to get overrun because I already knew living at my current house that it doesn't take long at all for land to get overgrown, overridden with weeds and [00:17:00] briers and brush and just all of that.
Yucky stuff and I wanted someone to take care of the land, but I also wanted it to be used for its full potential. So I ended up asking, his name is Brian. He's amazing person. I asked Brian do you know someone who would want to lease the land? Who would take care of it and then, would bail the hay or would keep cows out here, or just something to make sure that it's taken care of until I can get out here.
And he said actually. If you're interested, what we do here in this neighborhood. So we have several pastures that meet together, and currently we all have cows that we keep together in our herd in different times of the year as we move them to different pastures, and then we use. This field over here to bale hay, this one over here as well.
And then during the summer we moved the cows like to where your property would be and he said, I would be willing to [00:18:00] continue to take care of the land for you to weed it, to fertilize it, to bail the hay and to run the cows. If you would allow me to do that, then in exchange I would. Sell you two cows and I would take care of them as part of the herd.
And then each year you would have a cow that you could sell. You could process for meat, you could do whatever you wanted to with it. And that to me was just a huge relief, like an amazing blessing. Better than I ever could have imagined. Who? What are the odds? That the person who was selling me these 40 acres not only was gonna help me take care of the land, but also was gonna get me in the cattle business like.
That was amazing. And so what I wanna encourage you to do here at this point in my story is that if you have a dream, even if it, you don't know what it looks like, you don't know, it's not clear. It's a little fuzzy and you don't have everything figured out. I hear from widows [00:19:00] so often, they're like, oh, I wanna do this, but I don't know how.
I want to do this thing, or I wanna start a business, or I wanna write a book, or I wanna present something. But I don't know how, I don't know the technology. I don't know this, I don't know that. And every time I always tell them, we're not gonna worry about the how right now. The how is easy. We can figure out the how.
Let's just figure out the what, like what is it that you want for the future. And so at this point in my story, I had a clear idea, I knew I wanted to live out in the country. I knew I wanted pasture land to have horses and cattle, but I didn't know exactly what kind of house I wanted, what builder I was gonna use, how much it was gonna cost, if I could even build there, what the utilities were gonna look like.
Like all of those things I just didn't know, and I stepped forward anyway. And for those of you who maybe think I make things sound too easy, I had tons of doubts. I had tons of worries. Can I manage this? [00:20:00] Can I learn how to do this? Can I handle it? Can I go through the stress of building a house?
Like I've heard, building a house is super stressful. Can I do it? Can I appropriately plan a house layout that I'm happy with? I've heard all the horror stories, right?
Now over the next few months, I would spend so much time pouring over house plans, floor plans, pictures. I called and met with several different building companies. I went on Canva. If you're familiar with Canva, it's a graphic design site, and I lit, literally started putting like squares and furniture. It looks horrible.
Okay. It's the ugliest thing, but I started trying to map out my floor plan of what I wanted to look like. I saved tons of pictures, but it all felt really murky. Like the architects, I called the. People who build houses that I talk to, I would ask them like, do you have a list of, what [00:21:00] people are doing in kitchens these days?
Do you have a list of what to consider when you're laying out your living room? And all of them said, no, I couldn't believe it. I could not believe it. They all were just like, oh, just a YouTube it and go on Pinterest. And so I spent so many hours researching like what people are doing. I haven't lived in a new house and ever, I don't think I've ever lived in a house that was less than 10 years old.
And so I didn't know the latest and greatest of what people were out there, but I started just pulling together ideas.
I ended up meeting Robert in June of 2023, so it was a few months after I had bought this property and. I remember as we started dating, I was sharing about the land and sharing about my plans to build a house, and I was somewhat nervous because I didn't know if he would wanna live in the country or if he would want to build a house, or would we even have the same style?
Like what [00:22:00] if he had a totally different style than me and didn't like how I was setting things up? And guys, I could not have found someone more supportive. Of my dream, of my vision, of what I wanted to do, someone who helped me even build on to what my dream was, who helped give me ideas of how I could accomplish some of the things that I was wanting to accomplish.
We went together and met with an architect. We were married in February of 2024 and we went and met with an architect and started actually putting, pulling together our specific notes of what we wanted. Over 200 pages worth of notes, people notes, and pictures. I'm like, oh, I like this about this kitchen, I like this about this living room.
Those sort of things. And I thought so often about like, how is it gonna feel in my house? What is it [00:23:00] gonna look like when I walk into the room? Where is this door going to be? How is the kitchen island going to set? Where will the windows be set up? Like I have spent, I don't know how many hours just.
Envisioning and strongly imagining what it would look like. This helped me get really clear about what the floor plan needs to look like, and also it helps me to get excited about starting the build process.
The architect drafted some floor plans and it was incredible. I wanted to cry because for the first time ever, I was seeing my dream home. Sketched In reality, I was seeing the renderings of the outside and what that would look like. I was seeing the inside and how far apart things would be, and it was just an amazing milestone, having the architect to work with and unfortunately I have big dreams.
I've told you [00:24:00] guys this, and the floor plan came back way bigger than I had intended it to, but I had told her. In all fairness, I said, just build the house based on what I'm telling you, and if it's too much, we can trim it down. It came back at about 8,900 square feet and for some of you that may sound like super exciting, but for me, who was already tired of cleaning a house that was 4,500 square feet going 8,900 was just completely unfathomable and unreasonable for me.
We ended up saying, oh, okay, we gotta trim this back down some. But just seeing the potential of what it could be and help, really helped make more clear what this vision is that I have, what this dream is that I have. So as you are going along the path of pursuing a dream that isn't clear. Know that you are going to attract people to you who will help you further that dream.[00:25:00]
Who will support your dream, who will help make the dream even more clear for you? For so long, I felt like I had put my life on hold because I didn't know. Would I date again? Would I get remarried again? What would they wanna do? How would they wanna set it up? Would they like it? And I finally had to decide.
I was tired of putting my life on hold. I wasn't just gonna keep waiting. I was gonna move my life forward towards the vision and the dream that I had, with the full belief that the right person was going to come alongside me for this journey. And it has happened, and it can happen for you.
Now along the way, there have also been some setbacks and resistance. One of the setbacks we had. Was that we did not, I did not realize when I purchased the home that a large natural gas line runs down, diagonally down the property, essentially cutting the property in half. And for those of you [00:26:00] who don't know, at least here.
You have to build 50 feet off of a natural gas line, and for some of you, you might be thinking like, oh, you have 40 acres. That's no problem. Just build further away. But as we had the utility company come out and just mark exactly where the gas line was, I was a little discouraged because the line ran really close to where we wanted to build the house.
So we made some adjustments. The plan is still going to be able to work, but there was that period of time where I felt super discouraged and I thought that the place I wanted to build my house wasn't gonna be possible, wasn't gonna be feasible. I think it's really important for me to share with you some of the personal setbacks, challenges, and resistance I've had along the way of pursuing my dream.
Because when we hear someone's story about oh, she had a dream to build this house out in the country, and eventually she did it good for her, it was so [00:27:00] easy. We just think there was a start and there was an ending, and it all just flowed smoothly. No. There are a lot of setbacks and challenges that I have had along the way.
Last summer in 2024, I had this brilliant idea that. We have this really big house on a big piece of property. We're wanting to save up money to build the new house. We're also wanting to be closer to town and to have something that's much more manageable and to downsize the size of the house that we're currently in to make it more manageable, just keeping it clean, keeping things organized, that sort of thing.
So Robert and I talked about it and we decided to sell that house that we had out in the country and to buy a smaller house that's in town, just to make our lives more manageable, to make things more convenient, and to pull out extra equity out of our old house that we could put in savings and put towards building the [00:28:00] house that we've been planning for.
And to me that made perfect sense, right? Like I want my life to be more convenient. I want things to be more manageable. 'cause we have a lot that's going on and I wanna pull out equity and money from that house that I had before so I can put that in savings towards building the new house and getting that started.
And to me, all the boxes were checked and it just made a lot of sense. However, to everyone else. That I would explain that to. They're like, wait, what? What? You're building a house, which they already knew, so you're building a house, but right now you're gonna sell your old house and buy a different house, and then you're gonna build a house.
Like I could just see, it's like the meme, beautiful mind, like all the numbers and they're like trying to figure out, it doesn't make sense. And so what I wanna share here is that as you are pursuing your dream and your vision for the [00:29:00] future, there are going to be other people who don't understand, who don't get it, maybe who even think that you're crazy for the way in which you're pursuing that dream.
And that's okay. You don't have to explain yourself to everyone. I explained my logic to my dad, to my in-laws, to people in my inner circle who were very close to me because I knew that they would understand where I was coming from or at least try to. And for the most part, for those people, they were like, oh, okay, I see what you're trying to do here.
And I could see that some of them are like I wouldn't have done that, but okay. But also they're not driving back and forth. Hours a day getting people where they need to go, right? Their lives are much more conveniently located, but just know that as you're pursuing your dream, most people maybe won't understand and it won't make sense, and that's okay.
You get to pursue your dream the way you want anyway.
Another challenge that I [00:30:00] have experienced is. The person who owns the other 40 acres on the other side of my property had asked if we wanted him to run some utility lines. It would go past our house and then out to where his 40 acres are. We paid him to do that. He came and laid the lines, but unfortunately at the time of year that he did that, it was super wet.
Super soggy, and when you have big equipment out on soggy land, it tears up the land. So they dug the ditch, they laid the lines, and then we just had an influx of rain, snow, ice, just the ground where the lines were laid was super wet for months. And for some of you, you may have experienced a. More rainy, spring and summer than you have in most years like we have.
And so I had an open ditch that ran down the entire side of my property for four [00:31:00] months. For four months. I couldn't run cattle there because they could injure themselves. It's like a two foot hole, two foot ditch with lines in it. And now the lines were floating up to the top because the ditches were full of water.
So I was put in a situation where I felt like I was having to push my neighbor Hey, we need to get this ditch filled in. Hey, we need to give it covered up. Hey, if you don't do it by this date, I wanna hire someone to do it and send you the bill. I can't keep waiting to get this ditch filled up.
That has not been a fun experience. So as we're talking to this neighbor about this ditch, he happens to bring up that he was considering selling the 40 acres on the other side of our property. I got super excited because I thought, whoa, if we bought that other 40 acres, then no one would drive by our house.
Period. Currently, the way that the land is set up, if he were to build a house out there, he would drive along a road, which is an easement that [00:32:00] goes along the very edge of my property and leads back to where his house would be. So occasionally there would be people that drive by and it would be our neighbors and that would be fine.
But when I had the idea of, oh my goodness. We could buy that other 40 acres and then have 80 acres all together and we could, on his side of the land, he has a nice hill built up where you can look down and see the pasture and a beautiful pond and all the animals down in front of the house. And I was just had this amazing vision of ah.
I won't have to build my house in the middle of my 40 acres. I could build it back there, secluded away from everything on this hill overlooking the pasture land. That would be amazing. And then. There were tons of delays. He avoided calls, he avoided text messages. It was always we're thinking about it, selling it, but we haven't really decided.
And there was a lot of [00:33:00] frustration. And then finally he came back and said we've decided to build a house there and then we're just gonna sell the land with the house on it. And I was crushed. Like it bothered me for a few days there and bothered me a lot more than I thought it would. And I thought, why get my hopes up?
And I even prayed about it like, God, why? That would've been so cool. Like we would've had to save up more money to be able to buy that land. But that would have been. A really cool thing that could happen, and now I'm just crushed. Like, why? Why even bring it up? I was perfectly happy before with my dream and the way it was and where I was gonna build the house, but because that idea got planted in my mind, then I got my hopes built up, and now I'm disappointed.
It even got to the point where Robert was like, this really has you bummed out, doesn't it? And I had to sit back and go, I'm letting this affect me way more than it needs to
[00:34:00] another challenge and disappointment that we have had is recently we met with Brian, one of the guys that helps work our land and our cattle, and he shared that unfortunately both of our cows ended up having calves that died. They didn't make it and he was very adamant that he wanted to make it right, that he wanted to still give us a cow for selling or processing next winter.
And the winter after that he was gonna make it up to us. And I was disappointed, but also I was able to hold that and remain neutral because I know that life happens, right? Like especially with animals. Especially with cattle, whether you're talking about cattle or dogs or horses or whatever it is, like things just happen.
There are accidents, there's life and death. There are things that are totally out of your control, and so I do not think of Brian as being responsible [00:35:00] for that at all. I just took it as. Ugh. Okay. It's just another piece of sad news, but because I have coached myself so much over these past few years, I was able to hold that news and maintain just a neutral emotional experience and say, oh, that's really unfortunate, and I know that life happens and.
It's okay. We'll figure out something else. Like I, I knew that this was a risk, right? Like I knew it was a risk that something may happen, but it still was disappointing, especially coming after the news of the other 40 acres. So as our human brains tend to do, as I was thinking about my dream of building this house out there, I just had a few days where I just felt disappointed.
And I really started to question like, why am I pursuing this? Am I trying to force something? Am I like pushing [00:36:00] the square peg in the round hole? If this is supposed to happen for me, wouldn't it be easier? Wouldn't everything just flow smoothly? We are, we have been saving up money and setting aside money.
To be able to build our house with as little to no debt as possible, and still at the same time, it's discouraging because I've owned that land now for over two years. So for two years I've had the land. I've worked on the floor plans, I've worked on the design. The floor plans are close, but they're not a hundred percent where I want them to be.
Then I have all these other things happening. I have this weird now dynamic with my neighbor who has caused some frustration. Had a good relationship at first. Now it's gotten weird. I don't really know what's gonna be happening over there, and so it really just allowed me to just start thinking about am I on the right path?
Am I doing the right thing?
[00:37:00] So what I want you to take away from this part of this story is that you are gonna face resistance. You're gonna face disappointment, delays, but that doesn't mean that the dream is not meant for you. It's just part of the journey. It's part of the pathway to getting to something that really tugs at your heart.
So the day that we met Brian and his cousin and we got the bad news about the calves, I was just feeling discouraged about everything that was happening, questioning my dream and like, why am I even putting myself through this? I should just be happy with the house I have. I have neighbors. If I wanna travel in the future, it'll be easier to travel with the house I have now versus traveling when I have a farm.
Like, why am I trying to push this? What's the point? But then the more that I thought about it, I thought, what? What would I tell my clients to do? What would I [00:38:00] coach someone else and tell them to do? And so I mentioned to Robert, I said, what if we just took our side by side out there? And what if we just drove around and just spent some time out there?
He immediately jumped on board and moved a couple small mountains so that we could get the side by side hauled over there, that we could store it in a place that's close to the land temporarily. And we just, even though it was probably 103 degrees outside and I was sweating. We rode the side by side out there and when we got to the land, the cousin who was helping taking care of the land and the cattle was out there moving some hay and we chatted with him for a while.
We also chatted with some other neighbors who happened to drive by on their side by side and just talked to them and they shared with us some. Cool things about the land. There used to be a railroad that ran through there and there also used to be a lot of mines, like underground mines that were [00:39:00] there.
So they were sharing with us about the mines and about this really cool spring that comes up from the mine shaft and how clear the water is and how all the cows will like line up in a row and take turns drinking outta the spring. Just really cool things that we didn't know and hadn't thought about and.
We just drove around the property, every corner, every edge. We checked on the fencing. We just sat there and looked at where we were gonna build the house, and it was just the most beautiful, magical experience. And it reignited my love for the land that I had bought my desire to build a house where it.
It's planned to be and inspire me to we gotta get this ball rolling, right? Like part of it is I need to wait on timing of some things to know that I'm ready to go. But also at the same time, it really encouraged me to start making [00:40:00] my dream a reality as much as possible. Now. I deliberately chose this story to share with you because it isn't finished yet. I don't know when I'll get to start building my house. I meet with an architect today to talk through some design aspects and some floor plan aspects. My floor plan is still not a hundred percent where I want it to be.
My dream, my story isn't finished. My dream and the pursuit of that dream isn't finished. But I wanted to share that one with you today because it is real. This stream is happening. It's enough. You don't have to have it all figured out. I want you to feel encouraged that you can start living into a dream that you have for yourself even before it's finished.
It can be messy, it can be magical, and it can be yours.
It's okay if your dream isn't clear yet. It's okay to step, take a step even if you don't know what comes [00:41:00] next. It's okay if other people don't understand. Pay attention to what tugs at your heart. Don't wait until you have it all figured out. You gain clarity by walking through the fog. The more that you walk through it, the clearer it becomes.
If you are in this murky middle, your past survival mode of grief, but you're also not sure what's next, that is exactly where Brave Widow Academy comes in. I created it to give widows like you, the space, the support, and the structure to rebuild something that feels fully and completely yours. Don't wait until the plan is perfect.
Start with the pull. Start with the tug that you feel in your heart. Doors to the Brave Widow Academy are open. Now we kick off our first M. We kick [00:42:00] off with a pep rally on Monday, August 11th. We are going to set an intention for what you want over these next six months and six months from now in February of 2026.
You are going to be way closer to your dream or to clarifying your dream than you ever thought possible.
I have clients I'm working with right now who have said I wanna do this. I think it'll take me two years.
I have an amazing client right now. One of our, we've only been working together for a few weeks, and in one of our first sessions she said, I wanna declutter my house. I wanna buy, sell my house and buy a new one in two years from now, July of 2027, it's gonna take me two years to declutter my house. And I immediately and gently pushed back and said, it's not gonna take you two years.
We're gonna get your house decluttered in less than two years. And guys, it's just been a few [00:43:00] weeks. She has come up with a plan for decluttering her home and she's already way ahead of schedule. And guess what? Instead of looking at it as something she was dreading and something she was avoiding and something that she was putting off, I am encouraging her to step into her dream of what she wants to step into, that desire for this new home and what that would look like and what that would feel like.
And she's already ahead of her own schedule. She is already blown past the schedule of what she had laid out because now she, it feels more real now. She's excited about it. Now she's thinking about maybe I'll be ready to buy and sell a house next year, or maybe I'll be ready to go look at lots in the next couple of weeks and I'll pick out where I wanna build my house and I'll go ahead.
Secure that now your dream that feels so foggy and murky and hazy and far away is so much [00:44:00] closer than you think it is.
Okay. To join the academy, go to brave widow.com. I would love to see you there and if you wanna learn more, if you are unsure, if you want me to help you map out your dream or what that could look like over the next six months, just go to brave widow.com and schedule a consult call and I will help you paint the vision.
The Brave Widow Academy is open now, and it's where I help widows just like you move from surviving to living with a proven path coaching and a community of other widows who get it. If you're ready to take the next step, go to brave widow.com/academy to join us. I'll see you on the inside.
