Birthing the Village Pt.1

Selling the home, quitting the big job, going tiny...

For many years I fantasized about selling it all and moving into a tiny home, living a simple life in nature and working only on things I loved. Sounds dreamy right? Many of us share this dream, but very few of us have the gonads to actually do it.

This desire was always in me, but societal programming pushed me along the “proven” templated path to success. Get the education, the husband, the job, the kids, the house, the promotions. Check. Check. Check. Check. Check.

So I did it.

And I was good at it.

But something happened around the birth of my 2nd child, as I prepared to return to a demanding career in advertising once again. Those God-given, primal instincts started to kick in. I was shown the power of motherhood and I didn’t want it watered down. I wanted to dive into my life-co-creator role. I wanted to live in an intentional community, sharing days’ workloads with other families. My masculine energies started to die off.

But I returned to work anyways, and put those dreams on the back burner. For 2 more years I commuted into Los Angeles, by bike, train, and foot. I managed large accounts and flew from SF to NY often. I incubated start-up idea after start-up idea. It was no mystery that I wanted to break free. But somehow I still got promoted 2 more times, and tried time-after-time to inspire change at a company that was just not mine to change. I felt like a tug boat trying to turn around a giant cruise ship.

It became apparent, I was designed to do my own thing, to craft my own path.

A wise and younger colleague told me, “Brooke, I feel like you’re waiting for the perfect time to break away, for everything to line up, but it’s not ever going to be the perfect time.”

He was right. We just needed an opportunity. A new place to live and startover.

We were presented with the opportunity to live on a friend’s land in their tiny home. We knew this was our chance, the change that would beget many changes. We listed our home for sale, and I put my notice in at work.

By August 2019 our life journey took on a whole new path. We moved from a 2,000 sq feet home in an HOA community into a 350 sq ft tiny house on 9 acres in the Santa Monica Mountain Range. I had a small wine business that kept some liquidity coming in, but the husband was 100% in startup mode and we were living off savings and working towards a dream.

We had a data tech startup that we were building, pitching and seeking funding. We had a pitch meeting on the books, And then March 2020 happened.

All things came to a halt. And that’s where the real shift happened.

in hindsight, we had NO business starting a tech startup. I was deep-down frightened of running a corporate company. I didn’t want to go back to the grind of having employees and clients. I just wanted to build a company I could sell so I could get back to building my village.

That’s when I realized. The village is the Dream, not the end goal, but the thing to build NOW.

That’s when this vision came to me in a dream one night at 2am. The vision for Freestory Village was born.

This video best captures it all.

(The Hubs wrote, designed and edited the entire thing - I just did the voice over. But he nailed it. He got inside my brain and brought my dream to life.)

Things have changed since we made this video.

Elle was born.

Elle is completing a work in me. She is reconnecting me with motherhood, once again.

I love my kids. I want to be with them every day. But I also know I am on this earth to help families thrive in business and life without having to turn over their children and their skills to other systems and companies. We should be able to get back to the way things once were AND progress at the same time.

As I immerse myself more and more in the homeschool community, I find many types of different people. Freedom lovers, hippies, conservatives, naturalists, entrepreneurs. People are drawn to this path for different reasons, but the one thing they all have in common is a desire for FREEDOM. A desire for a less hurried life dictated by schedules and rigor.

The newest iteration of Freestory Village will honor this need to slow down, while creating space for inspiration and innovation.

That is why I am going to build an outdoor learning community featuring a co-working space and outdoor enrichment programs for people of all ages.

Think We-Work meets YMCA but in nature.

A one-stop nature spot for people of all ages to learn and launch in the outdoors.

Continued in Part 2.