Lisa Factora-Borchers
Letters from Ohio
I've moved to Ohio four times in my life.
Age 8, from New Jersey
Age 26, from Boston
Age 37, from New York
Each move was grounded in home-building: My father found a better job. Nick and I wanted to get married. Nick and I wanted to have kids. Nick and I had two kids and needed more room.
My pattern is to leave for school or career and come home for family. The movement normalized after a while. I've learned to never say never.
But now, with two children, and clear vision of my writing, I have doubts that I will move again in the way I moved before. Travels will never cease; writing takes me places. But my children, as most children do, I think, sleep best in beds they are familiar with, pushed into the same corners of the same room they have grown used to and juggling parenting and writing has been easier in Ohio than at any other time before.
There are no surprises in Ohio, there are promises kept, and predictable four seasons. An earthy texture to life that once made me flee, and now helps me rest. It's been reliable, like how I never question my parents house being an open door to me and smelling Adobo spices when I walk in the door, my father keying the piano with his latest melody. That used to make me want to flee, but now it helps me rest.
I live here now. And updates on this site will be about that transition; the ongoing work of mothering and writing, exploring the deep pleasure of simplicity, art, critical thought, and feminism.
Be like the new me: Stay.
Mothering in a Pandemic
Everything that Made Us Still Belongs to Us: An Interview with Alexis Pauline Gumbs
Imperfect Letters as Perfect Artform
Becoming a Map for Survival: An Interview with Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
What My Mother and I Don't Talk About: An Interview with Michele Filgate
M.C. on Visibility
VISIBLE: Women Write… on On Leaving New York
Chris Wolfe on "What Can the Essay…
M.C. on "What Can the Essay…
M.C. on So It is Written, So It Shall…
life decisions