An Open Letter to Hopeful Clients, Readers, and Supporters

Dated June 1, 2023

Nine years ago, we brought our first Airstream home to a little house in Kentucky, where we named her Louise (our truck was Thelma!) and began restoring and renovating her. We made mistakes and learned as we went, though even if there had been a plethora of internet resources like there are today, we’d still have had to roll up our sleeves and do the work. Our Airstream was a vessel, a home on the road, a constant in the ever-changing landscape of the nomadic life we were about to embark on. 

We didn’t intend to start a business — we just had a dream to live on the road. When our travels ended sooner than expected, we renovated a second Airstream. With more experience under our belts, a desire to work for ourselves, and a passion for creating homes for people to explore not only the outer landscape but their inner landscape, we started The Modern Caravan.

We started our business from scratch — quite literally. We didn’t have a shop to work in, savings in the bank, or even a line of credit. Saving on overhead costs and resuming our nomadic life, we took our business on the road, living and working on-site for three jobs from September 2017 - November 2018. Like many small business owners, we had to have a significant amount of naïveté to get started. However, we were wholly unprepared for how joy and passion for the work do not always translate, especially in a male-dominated industry where, as queer women, we quickly learned that we were disposable. We also did not ever consider that we would be victims of abuse and assault.

Before the abuse and assault, we worked for low pay and long hours at the sacrifice of ourselves (nourishment, rest) and time for our family, which led to burnout within a year of opening our doors. Financial instability and limited resources contributed to our choice to carry on, but so did many of our core wounds, such as inherent worthiness and belonging. And there was a little fight in us – we deserved a chance at starting a business, just like anyone else did. As women and as a same-sex couple, we were not starting from the same place of privilege as our male or straight counterparts. We did have more to overcome, and while sometimes, we used this as fuel for our fire, we went through things no one should have to go through to run a business (or ever).

In Laziness Does Not Exist, Dr. Devon Price writes, “We (LGBTQ+ people) feel insecure about living on the fringes of society and recognize that what acceptance we do receive could be taken away at any moment — and so we work as hard as we possibly can to protect ourselves. We take second jobs, pull long hours, get reports in early, and take on responsibilities that exhaust us, wanting to believe that our trophies, savings accounts, and satisfied managers will protect us from ignorance.” We know this firsthand — all those long hours, low wages, and stress hormones pumping through our bodies didn’t matter. No matter how hard we worked or how much of ourselves we sacrificed, we could not protect ourselves from ignorance — misogyny, homophobia, internet bullying, narcissistic abuse, or even assault. 

After finishing the Hope Project in June 2019, we showed ourselves that we could do business differently, and in the last three years, unlike the first few years in business, we have made a living wage, have had a safe place to live and work, had sustainable deadlines and a better work-life balance, implemented an application system to find clients who would treat us respectfully, restructured our contract to protect us in situations of abuse, bullying, harassment, stalking, or assault, and improved our work tenfold while working with clients who respected and trusted our process, all while working through triggers every time we went out to work and healing from the trauma we experienced.

Who we are now is not who we were when we started renovating Airstreams nine years ago. We have healed our deepest wounds. We have unlearned ingrained patriarchal patterns of behavior and what it means to be 'good' women, and we are no longer willing to be obedient and compliant. We are no longer willing to stay small and palatable. Women and queer people deserve to be safe and have boundaries at work (and in their lives), have needs, earn enough money to provide for their families, and desire a better life for themselves. While we could carry on as things are now, after we fought and clawed our way back to a life we recognized, we realized we fought and clawed our way into entirely new lives. 

To have everything we built crumble around us was one thing, but now we are intentionally letting go. We don’t need to prove anything to anyone anymore, least of all ourselves. It’s time to let go and move on — this work is not meant for us any longer. Instead, we will extract the parts of this work that once brought us so much joy and passion and apply those things to work that fully aligns with our hearts and who we are now. We are officially closing our business after we wrap up our remaining client projects. Our website will close down in December 2023, but for now, our Instagram account will remain active and don’t forget — Kate's book is a great, tangible way to connect with our work!

While we are proud of our builds, we are far more proud of who we've become despite adversity, and we are so grateful to everyone who supported us. 

Onward, 

Ellen & Kate