Hello everyone! Welcome to the first issue of Leaping Greenly! I am thrilled you are here. Today is my 30th birthday and it feels like the perfect day to send out my first missive.

When I was 19 years old, I had a WordPress blog called “Maggie Moving Mountains” (okay alliteration angel!). I started it in anticipation of studying abroad in Cape Town, and started posting to it before I left the states. I loved the feeling of sharing my thoughts, feelings, questions and learnings with people who resonated. About a year ago, I unearthed that blog from the depths of the internet and re-read it.

Grammar-wise and writing-wise… the blog posts were trash. And I say that lovingly towards myself. Heart-wise, curiosity-wise, free-expression-wise, the blog was so beautiful and connective!

Somewhere between 19 and 30 years old, it got harder to express and share freely, so here I am trying it again.

For my 30th birthday, I am selling a linocut print I made to raise money for two organizations I care about, Northwest Immigrant Rights Project and Queer and Trans Wealth! My dream is to sell 30 prints!

To buy a print, click this link and fill out the google form. If you don’t want a print but would still like to participate, feel free to venmo me a couple bucks to @maggie-stang and caption it “fundraiser.”

This was my first time making a print with multiple printed layers, and my first time making more than a few copies of a print. The words on the print are from a Gwendolyn Brooks poem called “To the Young Who Want to Die”:

Sit down. Inhale. Exhale.
The gun will wait. The lake will wait.
The tall gall in the small seductive vial
will wait will wait:
will wait a week: will wait through April.
You do not have to die this certain day.
Death will abide, will pamper your postponement.
I assure you death will wait. Death has
a lot of time. Death can
attend to you tomorrow. Or next week. Death is
just down the street; is most obliging neighbor;
can meet you any moment.

You need not die today.
Stay here--through pout or pain or peskyness.
Stay here. See what the news is going to be tomorrow.

Graves grow no green that you can use.
Remember, green's your color. You are Spring.

I first encountered this poem in Ross Gay’s essay “Grief Suite (Falling Apart: The Thirteenth Incitement)”, from his book Inciting Joy. Ross wrote that he keeps copies of this poem around him to bring him hope and encouragement when he is feeling especially down or hopeless. When I read the poem, I knew I wanted to have that last line hung up where I can see it.

To make this print, I pressed those words, “remember, green’s your color, you are spring,” over and over again. In a way, it became a prayer that my hands got to be a part of. If you are in need of these words today, take them in!

Thank you for reading this & for being a part of my life! I am SO GRATEFUL and I am obsessed with being 30 already.

💗Talk soon & take care💗,

Mag

p.s- one of my favorite features about these buttondown newsletters is that you can leave a comment. So, if you’re still here, pls comment and tell me something that’s giving you a lil hope this January?