AuthorAvokadoReading3 minViews6.6k.Published by31.03.2024
They say that if life hands you lemons, make lemonade. We all know that this is easier said than done, yet nothing is truly impossible if we set our minds to something and put in a lot of effort to achieve it.
Cara Brookins ended up in a violent marriage. She left her husband, took her kids with her, and started over in a new house since she was a mother of five and understood she had to protect her kids from the toxic environment they were made to live in. How was it accomplished by her? by creating her own construction blueprints and viewing YouTube videos that demonstrated various building skills, such as installing plumbing, running a gas line, laying a foundation, and erecting walls. It sounds amazing, doesn’t it?
Now that she’s thinking about it, she acknowledges that it has been impossible the entire time.
Cara, a computer programmer analyst, came up with the idea to build her family’s new home from the ground up because she couldn’t afford to buy a house big enough for all of her children at the time she started building it in 2007.
Cara described the feeling as being that “if anyone were in our situation, they would do this.” “I know it sounds crazy now, but no one else saw it like this.”
She borrowed about $150,000 for construction and paid $20,000 for an acre of land.
Her children helped build their 3,500-square-foot home; the eldest was only two years old at the time and the youngest was seventeen.
Since there was no running water on the property, her 11-year-old daughter Jada had to use buckets to carry water from the neighbor’s pond. Her son Drew assisted her in creating the plans. After that, she combined it with concrete bags weighing eighty pounds to create the foundation mortar.
The children would visit the site and assist every day after school. This tenacious mother paid $25 per hour to a part-time firefighter with building experience to complete the most difficult tasks. He was “a step ahead of us in terms of knowledge,” she recalled.
The family finally moved into Inkwell Manor on March 31, 2009, which was named in honor of Cara’s aspiration to become a writer.
“We felt ashamed that the only option available to us was to construct our own shelter,” Cara remarked. “We weren’t particularly proud of it, but it ended up being the best thing I could have done for myself.”
“Anything is possible for you if I, a 110-pound computer programmer, can build a whole house,” she exclaimed.
She continued, stating, “Select one goal and stick to it. Choose a big project you’ve always wanted to do, start small, and take the others who also need to recover with you. That has a great deal of power.
This isn’t it one of the most amazing tales you’ve heard recently?
If this family’s tenacity inspires you as much as it does, please SHARE their amazing tale on Facebook with your loved ones!
Parent’s devastating decision – forced to pull the plug on 13-year-old daughter after sleepover horror
Devastated parents forced to pull the plug on their 13-year-old daughter after sleepover horror. They’ve now issued a warning to spare others from the same tragedy.
When Esra Haynes died, she was just 13 years old, and the reason for her tragic death is bizarre.
This young girl who was referred to as “determined, fun, cheeky and talented” by the Montrose Football Netball Club that she co-captained, got caught in a viral craze called chrominghttps://comsoftvn.com/in-order-to-pick…a-tiny-stray-dog/, which involves inhaling toxic chemicals through the mouth or nose to get high.
Esra was an athlete and lead a healthy life, racing BMX bikes with her brothers, and leading her team to a national aerobics’ championship in Queensland. But all that was taken away from her after a wrong decision she made on March 31 during a sleepover at a friend’s house.
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As she wanted to be part of the viral trend, Esra inhaled a toxic amount of aerosol deodorant and went into cardiac arrest, sustaining irreparable brain damage.
Her parents were devastated. Appearing on A Current Affair with host Ally Langdon, they spoke of the heartbreak and the fatal consequences of inhaling toxic chemicals in an attempt to prevent something similar from happening to other naive young people.
“It was just the regular routine of going to hang out with her mates,” her mom Andrea, told Langdon in the interview. Her father Paul added, “We always knew where she was and we knew who she was with.
It wasn’t anything out of the ordinary…To get this phone call at that time of night, (it) was one of the calls no parent ever wants to have to receive, and we unfortunately got that call: ‘Come and get your daughter.’”
Initially, her friends weren’t aware how serious Esra’s condition was. They only thought she was having a panic attack, not aware that their friends was dying right in front of their eyes. “But after inhaling deodorant, her body was actually starting to shut down, she was in cardiac arrest and no one at the sleepover used cardiac arrest,” Langdon explained.
When her mom arrived by Esra’s side, paramedics were trying to revive her and told Andrea that her daughter had been chroming, a word that the scared mother heard for the first time ever.
Esra was transferred to the hospital and was placed on life support, but just eight hours later, the parents were told that her brain was damaged beyond repair and that needed to make a decision to turn the life support off.
Knowing there was nothing that could be done, Andrea and Paul called relatives and family members to say their final goodbyes. “It was a very, very difficult thing to do to such a young soul. She was put onto a bed so we could lay with her. We cuddled her until the end.”
Esra’s siblings, Imogen, Seth and Charlie are have been shattered ever since their sister is gone.
“It was really devastating, devastating for everyone involved, all her friends as well,” Paul said. “It’s been the most difficult, traumatic time any parent could go through. We haven’t been sleeping, we’ve hardly been eating, we haven’t been smiling–we’re not ourselves…But it’s not just affected us, it’s the community as well.”
Following Esra’s passing, Andrea and Paul are doing all in their power to put an end to the crazy viral craze that took their daughter’s life.
Speaking to 7 News, Paul said he wished he knew of chroming when Esra was still alive, so he could have warned her of the dangers: “If we were educated and the word had been put out there, we would have had the discussion around our kitchen table for sure.
“We need to ramp it up and let these kids find out the information first-hand, and not through friends, and not through social media–then they’re given the right advice off the bat.”
Esra isn’t the first victim of chroming. Over the years, a number of young people lost their lives from the consequences of it as it can easily lead to seizures, heart attack, suffocation, sudden sniffing death, coma, and organ failure.
“We’ve got the pictures in our mind which will never be erased, you know, of what we were confronted with,” Paul told Langdon. “Our gut was ripped out.”
We are so very sorry for this family’s loss and we wish no parent ever experiences such heartbreak.
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