The Greatest Love of All
On April 4, 2010, Easter Sunday, 596 women started a 10-week walking challenge. From this challenge, GirlTrek was born.
We started on Easter Sunday, because it was Resurrection Day and we thought, we too can be resurrected – from pain, trauma, inactivity. Walking, we thought, could bring Black women – those of us dying every day in plain sight - back to life. And walking in community, we knew, would change the world.
I can still recall the names of many of the women who took those first steps of faith with us. Ayanna, Kallima, Kendria, Janice…. Everyday Black women who had learned, through necessity, to prioritize the needs of others above themselves. With each walk, with each challenge, with each 30-minute commitment completed, we changed that dynamic, created a movement, and started a revolution that has taken over the globe.
The revolution was centered on self-love. A love that many of us Black women had yet to access. A love that was constantly under attack. A love that we had learned to suppress, deny and not believe in. A love that struggled to flourish in the anti-Black world in which we live. A love that felt (that can still feel) inconvenient at times when matched up against the pressing demands of each day.
But in spite of…
Because of…
In the name of … (#daughtersof)
We pressed on. Walking each day. One foot in front of the other. We searched for our mothers’ gardens, for the justice that had been denied, for the peace that we had prayed for. And we found it.
Ten years later and the love of two Black women is now the love of one million Black women (and counting) all loving on each other, our families, and communities. And we’re just getting started.
This is the first official message of the GirlTrek season, and it comes on Valentine’s Weekend. Not by accident. What better time to remind you that regardless of your relationship status, the love you need and want is here, ever-present, abundant, and overflowing via your sisters at GirlTrek. Together we are learning how to light our own fires, fill up our own tanks, and tend to our own wounded backs with our own split knuckles. Everyday women in this movement affirm each other and provide examples of what real radical love can look like. For this we are grateful.
May your weekend be filled with moments that make your heart go pitter-patter. You are the loves of our lives. We hope that you are reminded daily through our work to be the love of your own life. If you are not there yet, that’s OK. This year we promise that our work will guide you home to yourself.
