On Valentine’s Day 2003, I was sitting across from my husband at Sandy’s Bar and Grille in Downtown Franklin, TN. My mother had graciously offered to watch our three children so we could get away on the first date that we had been able to take in over a year. We were taking our time, wanting to stretch the hours out; with 3 children, the chances of an alone date happening again anytime soon were slim to none. 

After dinner, dessert, coffee and a drink, with no more reasons to keep the waiter tied up, I looked across the table at Jesse and asked a question that would forever change the course of our lives. “Is your life everything that you had hoped for?” 

Everything around us – the idle chatter, the clanking dishes, the music – seemed to stop. All we had between us were the words I had just spoken. The children weren’t pulling on our legs asking for another cup of juice, the gerbils weren’t gnawing on the cardboard toilet paper roll. The space inside our heads was quiet and still. We could actually think one entire thought through from beginning to end. We sat there completely entranced in the moment. As our thoughts formed, the ideas began to come. We discussed our ideas and felt new dreams begin to grow little tiny wings.

Those wings were big enough to take us on a flight that night through the streets of downtown Franklin. We walked the sidewalks for hours, feeling alive, free. After hours of talking and thinking of all the things that we could do, we landed on the perfect idea. We wanted to open a chocolate shop right there in downtown Franklin. Five years later, I stand on the sidewalk in The Cocoa Tree’s new neighborhood, Nashville’s Historic Germantown district, looking back at what happened as I prepare for what’s ahead. We did open a little chocolate shop in Downtown Franklin, just a block from the restaurant where the dream began. It was called The Cocoa Tree. Our community immediately embraced us. After only a year, we had the momentum we needed to open the shop of our dreams on Main Street itself, where we lived upstairs with our 4 children.

Living on Main Street was one of the happiest times of my life, but it was also one of the hardest. We were struggling to keep up with the product demand while maintaining the cash flow. We were working 16 hours days and just couldn’t keep up. The building that we loved so much was falling down around us; to say it was inadequate for our production needs is an understatement. We fought electrical problems, plumbing problems, and finally had to move out because of an environmental problem. We opened a shop on 3rd Ave, just around the corner from our Main Street shop, but it was never the same. We closed The Cocoa Tree a little over a year after that last move.

It was heartbreaking. I was devastated and emotionally exhausted. I needed time away from it to heal, to learn, to breathe. My family needed time to adjust and rest, to connect to something other than life with The Cocoa Tree.

It turned out to be a wonderful thing, of course. God knows what He is doing; His plans for us are sometimes not what we want, but ultimately they are best. During this time of rest Jesse and I had another beautiful baby (Manhattan Faith), I finished my book (Chocolate Covered Friendship), and I met my business partner Jimmy Torino.

Life seems to make a little more sense now. The Cocoa Tree is open once again in our wonderful new space on 5th Avenue in Germantown. I can’t wait to see what the next five years hold for this dreamer, her family, her business partner, and our beloved little chocolate shop.