Framing a Life: Building the Space To Be Me

On a blustery Maine day, thirty-nine-year-old Roberta Kuriloff found herself standing on a plot of land purchased with her former partner, holding a couple of wood stakes to mark off exactly where her new house would sit. No longer their land. No longer their dream. Now, just hers.

Immersed in a world of blueprints, materials, contractors, and critters, Roberta confronted the major losses she'd suffered in her life-in particular the deaths of her mother and aunt from cancer and her separati...