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Throughout the renovation that my husband and I did on our house, as I was writing episodes about each phase of the construction, I kept thinking I'd never show them to anyone.  I'd certainly heard about people having emotional ups and downs during their home renovations, but usually those stories involved marital conflict over the tile color, or anger over unexpected builder fees, or frustration about the permit process.  I hadn't been spared those feelings, but the renovation was prompting much deeper things to happen inside me.

For instance, the demolition pitched me into a long-suppressed grief about my not having had children.  Our do-it-yourself building of a stone wall made me realize the fortitude I'd need to deal with my mother's newly-diagnosed dementia.  And a shocking disaster forced me to decide between rancor toward those who were responsible, and the calm, let's-get-on-with-the-repair approach of my architect husband. 

Around the time we finished the house, I saw an article in Newsweek about a family therapist named Rachel Cox who, incredibly, specialized in people going through home renovations. I contacted her and asked if she would meet with me so I could find out if my experience was completely off the wall.  She said yes and spent three days talking to me. 

"With a lot of people," Rachel Cox told me, "all this deep psychological stuff starts happening during renovation but they don't realize why they're so stirred up.  They just think it's about property value or a growing family, not their dynamics and fears and family histories.  And most homeowners think of building going more smoothly than it does anyway.  So when they come to me I see overwhelming anger or grief or depression.  But then many of them come to see that it's also a paradigm-shifting time, when they can come to terms with loss, or find hidden creativity and strength.  That it's a life-changing event." 

"But why," I asked, "doesn't anyone ever talk about the deeper side of this experience?"

"People in the industry," she answered-and she is married to a contractor-"notice clients' emotional rises and falls, but since they work with the tangibles of wood and hammers and nails, they rarely know how to deal with psychology.  Psychologists notice the occasional patient's struggle, but since renovation isn't their area of concentration, and they're rarely married to people who know the building industry, like you and me, they're less likely to possess knowledge of the construction process." 

"Therefore I'm not off the wall?" I asked her-and I felt myself almost ready to cry. 

"Not at all," she said.  "It's a melding of two worlds that needs to happen."

Having received the validation I'd needed, I flew back to my now finished home, and turned my hidden writing into this book.

Rachel Simon, Building a Home with My Husband, memoir, home renovation, Penguin Books