Shana and Peter

work-in-progress Shana and Jim

Name: Shana and Peter

Occupation: B&B owners

Decade Born: 1970’s

Location: New Hampshire

When life was hardest who kept you going?

“Each other.”

Peter: We met in high school, but we’re not high school sweethearts. We haven’t been together for 20 years, we’ve been together for 6. When I first came up here from D.C., I went through this thinking process of ‘why am I living here in this building when I want to be out in the hills?’ That was a pretty tough time in my life and in Shana’s life too.

Shana: A lot of stuff kind of all culminated into one big thing and I hit rock bottom right before we remet and it took a couple years for everything to shake out. I was in a bad marriage where I wasn’t allowed to be myself and I had zero support or help and it was an abusive relationship mostly because it was a neglectful relationship and somewhat physical too and I was pretty beat down by the time everything fell apart. It’s not always easy to find someone who can be your best friend and your partner and help build you back together when you’re a complete mess and help build you back together into what you want to be and not what they want you to be.

It’s also nice that you had the personal shared history and that kind of gives you a leg up for rebuilding.

Peter: I think that’s true. Had we not come from the same town and gone to the same high school, it may have worked out differently. I don’t really know. I couldn’t say because things are the way they are, but I think that-

Shana: I think we instinctively felt comfortable with each other. We were never friends in high school- our circles intertwined, but we weren’t friends- but we remembered each other and we knew each other.

And did you reconnect there or here?

Peter: Here. I was leaving the city, going out to the country to see some things and Shana was already here. She was living over near the Vermont border where the vet hospital was. When I was looking for places to climb- because this is a famous destination for rock climbers and I wanted to visit here- I looked around on Facebook to figure out who of my friends might live around there to maybe crash with them. Shana was like right down the street. I was like, ‘Alright it’s a little weird because we don’t know each other too terribly well’, but again, we were comfortable with each other so I was like, ‘Hey, I’m coming to visit.’