This letter was written to my dear community — OPAWL: Building AAPI Feminist Leadership — who I have been working with for several years, but in the last two have been serving as the Director of Operations and Communications. After much contemplation, I resigned from my position with heartfelt love. The letter was sent today, my last day in this role.

Dear OPAWL,
I still remember after I moved back, one of the first things I did was conduct a proper google search to make sure that THIS TIME! I will stay put and not move away. I typed “Filipinos or AAPIs in Ohio” and I started reading about something called “OPAWL.” Sign me up! Shortly, I started receiving the emails and jumped at the first thing that sounded like a good challenge: travel to Washington, D.C. and lobby on the Hill for the Value our Families legislation. It was a thrilling experience and pulled me in.

OPAWL gave me energy, so as I grew more familiar with the organization, I co-created “Feminist Grounding,” a group sharing circle to reflect on what healing looks like in an AAPI body. More energy came, which led to facilitating healing circles and connecting with others after the Atlanta Spa shootings. Then on a long drive across the state, I found myself on the phone with Tessa asking me if I would consider serving on the board of directors. The answer was YES. These powerful experiences led to a whispery thought: “Maybe someday, if the right invitation presents itself, I will work for OPAWL.” Which brings us to the summer of 2022 when I began in a new role as the Director of Operations and Communications. As Ohioans, you must remember that tagline after you crossed the state line that read: “Ohio! Find it here!” Well, friends, I often DIDN’T find it here—even after moving to and from Ohio five times across my lifespan! But, OPAWL invited me to do something different than head longingly for the coastal cities. I seized the opportunity to help create the Ohio that I wanted and needed as a brown child growing up in white schools and churches.

After two years of community formation, systems and infrastructural building, and organizational development and strategy, I find myself transitioning again. It is bittersweet that, coincidentally, my last day with OPAWL in this role falls on the same day to mark the end of Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Heritage Month.

Some folx have asked me, “Why are you leaving?” First of all, don’t worry: I’m not. I’m just shifting out of a particular role. But the deeper and more truthful answer is this:

Like many of you, I have been witnessing the global atrocities, and sitting with the call from Palestine, Sudan, and the Congo to not only end the soulless, catastrophic violence, but build the world we all need. How do we do that? How do I do that? 

As organizers, we demand that people ask themselves to transform in order to bring about the world we need and deserve. How could I not ask myself the same thing? The more I sat with the simple question, “Who am I called to be?” the more clear the call became and I decided to return to my work in creative writing. My answer was to make space in my life to be fully present to myself as a mother to two children, a descendent of elderly immigrant parents, a life partner, and a politically conscious artist purposed for collective liberation. 

Who are you called to be in this moment?

My heart is full of gratitude to all of you for supporting me in my work. I am profoundly grateful, especially, to Tessa and Jona who have grown OPAWL from its seedling years with their own and their families’ lives and energy. Their labor has enabled OPAWL to root and rise: to create a staff and a 350 person (and growing!) statewide membership. As someone with a record of repeatedly absconding Ohio for crimes of coastal reprieve and then returning, I can attest to the miracle that OPAWL is—to have lived in this state BEFORE this organization existed and then to experience it as a thriving entity, and to have worked inside the innermost folds of its heart—with the members, staff, and partners. What a rare gift, truly. 

I integrate this transformative experience and take it with me into my new chapter, where I will undoubtedly continue to world-build with all of you, but in a different capacity and voice. There are no goodbyes, my friends, just another transition and refitting session with this community I love so dearly. I genuinely hope each of you is able to grow with OPAWL as I have.

Thank you, OPAWL, for being a place where I have been able to practice the most essential life skills—to organize across differences, hold the friction of uncertainty, rally for change, and invest in relationships as a primary and medicinal lifeline. Most of all, thank you for allowing me to discover that I am capable of fulfilling one of Grace Lee Bogg’s most divine principles:

“The most radical thing I did was stay.”

Toward a freer Ohio, to a free world—

Lisa Factora-Borchers