Maggie Hess
"I am up for anything!"
The main feature of PANinA that attracted Maggie is the opportunity to develop her skills with nonviolent communication. She wants to live the dream of peace in her thoughts and actions in order to embody the distinction between propeace and antiwar without “waving an ideological flag.” Maggie strives to develop community through meaningful acts of love. She enjoys the celebration of diversity, the art of story, and sitting around the campfire drinking hot cider. “That sort of thing sustains me and keeps me alive.”
Maggie is the youngest of five children; she has two sisters, a brother, and a transgendered sibling. She has a tradition of Quakerism in her family, but she is interested in exploring Unitarian Universalism. Maggie currently lives with her mother, with whom she has lived off and on since childhood, but she says, “I’m ready to spread my wings more,” so she is applying to live as a friend's teacher on her farm in southwestern Virginia. Maggie does volunteer work at her local Land Trust and with the Appalachian Peace Education Center (APEC), and she worked at the William Penn House in Washington, DC, five bocks from the Capitol.
A recurring theme in Maggie’s poetry is the peace that can be found in the routine parts of life. She loves the natural world, so she resonates with the way in which respecting it and even worshiping it is such an integral piece of the peace puzzle. She also recognizes the fundamental importance of developing peace within; she says, “I want to overcome the abuse that I have experienced without being a ‘victim’.”
