Black women, you are welcome here.
Let’s go for a walk together and listen to the audio of today’s email. It’s 12:49 minutes. Do you think we can get a mile in before it’s over? Click here to play.
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Hey Y’all!
It was a vibrant weekend of “Welcome Walks” all across the country, and the morning after I thought, let me reflect on it. So here goes. I hope you grab your sneakers and go for a walk with me. And I hope today’s Monday Motivation inspires somebody…
Dear Sister,
This work starts with welcoming yourself back to yourself.
Inviting yourself to the party.
Gathering all of your raucous pieces—-and I mean all of them. The piece of you that spills over with fluff. The part of you trapped in your throat. The part of you that whispers yes when your gut growls no. The piece of you that holds on to toxic things feels reactive because any energy is some energy to the part of you that feels flattened by the facts of life.
Radical Welcome starts with welcoming yourself back to this one precious experience of being alive.
Saying hello to Little-Girl-You who had dreams. Whether deferred or not, the you that wakes up fresh-faced and enthusiastic when those you love need you to commiserate. Welcome her. Your seditious you—who vows to read these emails like you’re part of a secret society of hopeful heroes.
Invite her to the walk.
The Black girl who knows that every beauty secret is an insult to her big nose and thick thighs. Invite her.
The girl who finds sanctification on her own terms, which may not be quite right for mass adoption, but she feels like her foremothers are fangirling her to freedom.
Radical Welcome starts with welcoming yourself to go outside to walk, to slow down.
Welcome is the more joyful cousin of forgiveness.
…because if you can speak sweetly to all of the disparate parts, then and only then, empowered with the integrity of your truest wish for who you are becoming, can you welcome an army of others who are fresh on the frontlines of becoming too.
Our best selves are now and forever.
No apologies.
Black women, you are welcome here.
Take a lap to that!
…the fullness of freedom.
(Do you know what it feels like to be free?)
This weekend, all across America, we witnessed our most important core value: Radical Welcome.
So many of you said yes, I will drop a pin on the map as a beacon for all Black women around me to know that she is welcome here.
Here is Philadelphia. It is New Orleans. Here is the seashores of South Carolina and the high deserts of Las Vegas.
Here is anywhere a Black woman decides.
The story behind this important core value is beautiful actually.
(Hold on let me take a drink of water because I’m getting excited!)
These two words, “radical welcome” started with the alchemy of aunties.
The Backstory: Our board chair, Tulaine Montgomery, brought her actual aunty to a very important GirlTrek strategy meeting with executives, funders, and powerful government officials. Her aunty did not shrink in the corner. Noooooo. She sat at the head of the table to command “On Behalf” respect.
As we commenced to discuss the next decade of GirlTrek‘s impact, she listened intently, nodded affirmatively, and waited patiently. Once we were close to articulating a long-range plan, she cleared her throat and said something like, “All of this is amazing and will save lives, but none of it will work unless every single woman who joins GirlTrek experiences what I just experienced in the lobby.” She explained that earlier that morning GirlTrek’s national team saw her, embraced her and without knowing who she was, made eye contact, greeted her with kindness, offered information and celebrated her existence. They practiced what she called “Radical Welcome.”
She said, “Put THAT in the long-range plan” [or nothing else will work]. She rebuked the impulse to establish protocols and best practices or anything else—before we made solid and scaled our existing culture of Radical Welcome.
Of course.
She was right.
It’s always been there.
GirlTrek has always been a ragtag group of free people.
Someone this week asked what GirlTrek’s politics are.
I said, “Living.”
Without a beat, I doubled down:
“Joy and Justice.”
She paused, then pushed around identity politics and current legislation.
I ask, “Does it allow all Black women to live longer?”
Then Yes?
“…we support it.”
The truth is, we ain’t gone agree on everything. Some of y’all celebrating Pride and some of ya’ll celebrating Pentecost. We ain’t gone agree on everything.
…but we ARE going to Love.
WE ARE GOING TO LIVE.
Some of y’all stand firm for abortion rights and some have had abortions and would rather not talk about it at all. I understand cognitive dissonance in a traumatized body. And as a body politic, we are traumatized. This is why our ethos of Radical Welcome is essential.
You are welcome here.
Now.
I can hear a chorus of white women—half of y’all my homegirls—saying “Whew, great, and finally.”
Let me stretch. Let me twist, touch my toes, and clarify.
GirlTrek is for Black women.
We need and welcome a community of allies to conspire with us in a deeply personal pursuit to prioritize our own living.
No one can do the work of walking forward for us. This is an inside job.
So we walk in solidarity and sacred space on Saturdays, together.
Black women (insert your own definition there).
So we ask our allies, members of our families, and communities to respect this solemn sojourn.
We are so grateful.
And there is a place in the revolution for you: amplification of our work, real resource reconciliation, friendship, and goodwill.
And work.
Shoot, you can do some of the work. We hired a white guy on our national team last week. We need Josh’s specific expertise and receipts scaling grassroots tech solutions. We are not pretending we can change insidious-ass systemic oppression alone, but we are suggesting that the walk is sacred. It’s a “Before I Let Go” themed hero’s journey away from the darkness of collective trauma back to the rapture of being alive.
And Black women, you are welcome here.
…whether you got a Bible or a blunt, you are welcome here.
And I am so glad that GirlTrek holds complexity with kindness because this weekend, Vanessa and I screamed the answer to “What’s my favorite word?” We stay ready to Blow the Whistle of Black-Girl-Fun. (The Usher concert in Vegas is lit y’all!) Then, not 24 hours later, we went to The Stellar Gospel Awards with our hankies. Within two minutes, we were both standing on different rows, hands raised in total surrender to the majesty of God’s goodness—like the lady on the Apollo. We just trying to be like Cece Winans y’all.
Our actual sisterhood began that way. Vanessa accepted me—all country and COGIC and confident. And me accepting her—all ratchet, and wonderful and real. We made space for the fullness of our freedom. No real friendship demands your reduction.
You are welcome here.
Every part of you.
Thank you to every woman who welcomed a new sister this weekend. We know that loneliness is deadly, so I want to thank you for saving lives.
Sincerely,
Mo Money (and Vicious V)
This is what radical welcome looked like across the country this weekend. Thank you to the women who bravely stepped up to lead and inspire. You are a true sisters keeper.
