For many years, Cara Brookins was married to a man whom she describes as abusive, controlling and violent. She even says he "descended into full-blown paranoid schizophrenia."
By 2008, Cara and her four kids — who were 17, 15, 11, and 2 — felt trapped inside their own home. The only way out of the situation was to physically leave — but Cara knew she couldn't afford to purchase a new home that would fit all five of them.
Fed up with living in fear, Cara took the kids and moved with them into a small, cramped home near Little Rock, Arkansas.
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That's when Cara made a life-changing realization.
"I had rented this cabin for a Thanksgiving getaway," she told CBS News. "And driving there, we passed this house that had been ravaged by a tornado. It was this beautiful dream house and it was sort of wide open. You don’t often get the opportunity to see the interior workings of a house, but looking at these 2-by-4s and these nails, it just looked so simple."
"I thought, 'I could put this wall back up if I really tried. Maybe I should just start from scratch.'"
Over the course of the next nine months, and with the help of YouTube tutorials and her four kids — Cara did the unthinkable.
If you or someone you know has been a victim of domestic abuse, you can find help and support at DVIS.org, the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233, or by contacting your local women's shelter (domesticshelters.org).
