Clearing the Landing Strip

Motherhood, Art, and How to Begin

Dear Reader,

Last year, around this time, I didn’t think much. I just did.

I could have gone down all the familiar rabbit holes: I don’t have the time. The kids need me. My husband’s work is too busy. After this difficult year, if anyone in our family deserved four weeks away, it would be him.

And then the most dangerous thought of all: I am not worth it.
I’m not really a writer or an artist. I’m from Germany; English isn’t even my native language. Most of the time, when I’m not in the mountains or on my horse, I don’t belong here at all. What am I doing?

But I didn’t think. Deep down, I knew what was right. I knew that taking time to do my art was the most important thing I could do for my family and for myself.

Morning walk when the sun clears out the fog.

Because otherwise, how are my days spent? Like most of us, I’m pulled in every direction: a tug-of-war between time, needs, priorities, fear, hope, and laughter. The hard-boiled promise to make things better for my kids than I had. To build a marriage that actually has love and time in it. To plan a trip someday, to remember why we’re in this together.

Meanwhile, I’m keeping up friendships across oceans, doing a half-baked job at making new ones, holding the hand of my aging, depressed mother from 5,000 miles away. And that’s without even talking about the paying job.

There’s no real difference between living life and making art—but creativity needs space. As photographer and writer, Sally Mann says in her new memoir Art Work,

“(Creativity) doesn’t drift down and lightly settle upon us like a gauzy visitation from the muse. You have to clear a well-lit and GPS-coordinated landing strip for it.”

For most of my life, I’ve been good at bulldozing space. Writing was my refuge, my escape from a chaotic childhood where no one was dependable but me, and the words that emerged on the page. Later, in academia, that practice turned into an obsession. All the old insecurities—being too intellectual for my family, too small for this new world—fueled a compulsive need to work, to earn my place.

I wrote, I produced, I proved—but the actual landing strip was buried in brush, overgrown and dark. No lights to be seen.

Tired of sunsets yet? I got obsessed with them during my time at the Flathead Lake Biological Station.

Then the habit broke. I jumped and broke it with both hands.

Maybe because I’m older now. Maybe because I lost a friend whose own habits killed her.

Maybe because I’m tired of surviving instead of living. Maybe because watching my kids grow made me realize who I want to be, not just what I need to endure.

I’m writing this now because that decision — to apply anyway, to go — changed something fundamental in me.

At the OpenAIR Residency, I didn’t just find quiet time to write. I found proof that I could exist outside the needs of everyone else. That the world didn’t collapse when I stepped away. For four weeks, my children were fine. My husband was fine. Even my mother was fine.

But I came back different. Not with a finished book, but with a steadier heart. I understood that creativity is not a luxury or a reward — it’s part of what keeps me human, connected, alive.

If you’re a mother, or a caretaker, or someone who’s convinced the world might stop spinning if you took time for art, listen: it won’t. Apply anyway. Don’t think too much.

You don’t need to be sure you belong there. You don’t need to have a perfect portfolio or the right words. Bring your curiosity and your art. Make the space. Clear that landing strip, even if you have to do it with shaking hands.

Because once you do, something extraordinary happens. The work, the real work — the art, the self, the life you’ve been postponing — finally knows where to land.

Auf bald,

Eva

P.S. The current call for artist at OpenAir includes over a dozen residency sites in Montana! Not a writer? Artists of all mediums can apply by December 17.