Monday Motivation: Putting Parameters Around Your Pain
“Black women have convinced themselves that they are coping but their bodies tell a different story.” - Dr. Gary Bennett, Vice Provost Global Health and Medicine, Duke University | GirlTrek Board of Directors
Boundary:
The edge or limit of something
The limit of a subject or principle
The limit of what someone considers to be acceptable behavior
Question of the week? How do we protect our peace and sacred space while also processing our pain and others?
Did you tune in to this Saturday’s National Rally & Roll Call? If you missed it, you missed a pivotal conversation between thousands of Black women about gratitude, processing pain, and protecting our sacred space. It was the walk and talk that we all needed after a relentless month of terrorizing heartbreaking events.
Instead of sitting in our pain, we processed it together on foot. Instead of becoming consumed by our grief, we galvanized our crews and came together in community for a 30-minute power walk that unleashed a powerful healing force into the atmosphere.
With intentionality, we laid down our burdens and our worries and worshiped together in the streets of our neighborhoods.
We chopped it up about the new Kendrick album, opened up the line so that women could share testimonies and gratitude, and we celebrated being alive together through belly laughs, a Warren G sing-along, and some good old-fashioned best friend conversation.
This is what we always imagined Saturday mornings feeling like and looking like across the country. Like a warm hug. Like an old Franky Beverly and Maze song. Like a backyard BBQ, but on foot. Like a cacophony of Black women singing to the heavens, we are alive, we are alive, we are alive.
If you missed it, make sure to mark your calendar for 9 AM ET next Saturday, because that’s when the next National Rally & Roll Call goes down LIVE!
That’s right! By popular demand, we’ll be LIVE each Saturday this Summer hosting the National Rally & Roll at 9 AM ET (Dial: 1 (646) 876-9923 CODE: 734464325). Grab your sneakers and tag your friends.
Our weekly Rally is an opportunity for Black women to talk about what matters most to us while getting moving. It’s also about accountability. Shout out to everyone doing GirlTrek’s 30-Day Jumpstart Challenge. If you haven’t started, download here now and take your first walk today.
If you need encouragement and haven’t yet found the will to take your first step, we offer you the beautiful images below. This is what it looked like this weekend across the country in GirlTrek. We are not just our sister's keeper, we are our sisters. Those pictures below. That’s you, sis. That’s your best life waiting for you. That's the community come to gather you. That’s divine timing whispering to you now. That’s all the love and joy of one million Black women poured out over you, if only you will receive.
Take a walk with us. Join a movement.
Thank you to the Coaches and organizers who led with courage and bravery this week. With a special shout out to the city of Los Angeles and Coaches Zakiyah and Rochelle for their statewide activation at Magic Johnson Park. We could have stayed home. We could have let the news, the fear, the fatigue keep us away from our calling, but we stayed the course. And real women, women who had nowhere to go but here, were saved.
This is our calling. This is our testimony.
May we walk into the week protecting our sacred space and placing boundaries around our pain and others, so that we may heal and grow.
Be well sisters.
The movement is with you.
With love,
Vanessa & Morgan
"Rarely, if ever, are any of us healed in isolation. Healing is an act of communion.
- bell hooks
