What Freedom Looks Like
[When the Monday Motivation comes midweek, because the Juneteenth celebration hit so hard that we’re just now recovering!]
Dear Family,
We already knew GirlTrek was getting ready to have the biggest, Blackest Juneteenth on record when we got an invite last week to come and kick it at Vice President Kamala Harris’s house for a backyard BBQ!
The invitation was extended to one family in the GirlTrek movement and we shared it with longtime volunteer and GirlTrek Coach, Habibah Jackson.
Habibah rolled up to the Veep’s house with her two boys and husband and said “it felt like I was at a family picnic with all of my cousins.”
A 40-something Muslim biologist from Silver Spring, Maryland, by way of Newark, NJ, Habibah went from a cookout with the Vice President on Saturday to leading a trek with nearly 40 women along a portion of the Underground Railroad on Monday.
This is what service looks like in GirlTrek.
Everyday, Black women who could choose to do anything choose to be the Harriets of their communities, organizing on their days off, spending their weekends in the streets walking with their community, encouraging sisters one-on-one, and using their own lives as examples.
And Habibah is just one woman.
This weekend, in cities across the country, the GirlTrek community continued to demonstrate the power of our sisterhood. Thank you!
From Cincinnati, OH where women trekked down historic Hamilton Ave, stopping at a Black-owned business to show support, to Syracuse, NY where women organized a “wisdom walk”, each taking their turn walking and talking alongside 78-year-old, Mother Maxine, a Trekker and elder in their community who used the occasion of her birth to share wisdom with the other women in her Crew. To Houston, TX where the whole Juneteenth parade seemed to be a flood of superhero blue. To the women who trekked solo and joined in on our powerful Saturday morning National Rally & Roll Call to answer the question, what does it mean to be a free Black woman?
If you don’t know the answer for yourself - or if the feeling of freedom just feels illusive - hard to locate in your body - hard to believe in because of what you see around you - we want you to do three things now before the weekend starts.
1. Take a walk today and listen to last Saturday’s conversation. Hear the voices of women from around the country tell you in their own words, what freedom is. Then mark your calendar for this Saturday at 9AM, ET and plan to join us on the line for the National Rally & Roll Call. Each week we walk and talk about the things that matter most to Black women. It’s the weekend dose of inspiration that you didn’t know you needed.
2. Download the 30-day Jumpstart here and commit to completing it. [Already claimed your victory? Golden shoelaces are being made as we speak! Expected ship time: 2-3 weeks. Thank you for your patience as we make sure the gold is glittering in just the right way!]
3. Invite a friend! You don’t need to wait and find a walk near you. You are the walk and you + 1-2 of your friends are a Crew. Share this Field guide with them and say it’s time to lace up!
We’re planning to make this last week of the month really count! We've just announced our new CFO, we're in the final push for #StressProtest registration with less than 100 spots left and this July we will invite all of you to keep waking with us for the Remix of the Jumpstart so stay in the game and as Beyonce reminded all us with the anthem of the Summer - “If you don’t seek it, you won’t see it.”
Seeking everything that’s ours and then some.
Your girls,
V&M
