GirlTREK

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PrayerTREK Day 10 | A Prayer for Our Future Oct 26, 2026

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What are we building, healing, and changing today that we hope the next generation will never have to fight for tomorrow?

Our final PrayerTREK walk begins with the spirit of Ubuntu: I am because we are. Cynthia reminds us that none of us became who we are alone. Someone taught us. Someone encouraged us. Someone prayed for us. Someone believed in us before we knew how to believe in ourselves.

Walisa Brown opens our final day in prayer, first offering prayer in Arabic and then lifting up our children and young people, asking that they be protected, guided, strengthened, and supported as they walk into their futures.

Then Jatae Daly, a first-generation college graduate and longtime college-access leader, joins Cynthia to talk about what young people actually need from the adults around them. Her answer begins with something simple but powerful: love—caring adults who see their potential without constantly viewing them through comparison or critique.

After 10 days of moving from me to we, Nyra Govan leads the final collective prayer—not only closing Day 10, but gathering everything we have carried across the entire PrayerTREK journey and praying over the next generation of leaders.

We end where these 10 days have been leading us all along: our lives are connected, our work continues, and there is power when we pray together.

PrayerTREK Day 9 | A Prayer for Those Who Carry Us Oct 26, 2026

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Who cares for the people who spend their lives caring for everyone else?

Today we pray for the mothers, daughters, sisters, aunties, healthcare workers, women caring for aging parents, women raising children while caring for elders, and everyone holding medications, appointments, meals, phone calls, schedules, and responsibilities together.

Cynthia is joined by Keinika Carlton, who shares her very personal experience caring for her 83-year-old mother, who is living with dementia and receiving hospice care. Keinika speaks openly about how quickly caregiving can change, how little prepares us for it, and the lesson she had to learn for herself: caring for someone you love also requires caring for you.

The episode offers a reminder every caregiver deserves to hear: serving someone you love does not require disappearing from your own life. Rest, help, support, and receiving care are not selfish—they are part of sustaining the caregiver too.

Siobhan Ollivierre, a longtime GirlTREK sister and community-care leader, closes in collective prayer for caregivers’ strength, rest, emotional resilience, health, support systems, respite, financial relief, community, joy, and peace.

PrayerTREK Day 8 | A Prayer for Safety & Freedom Oct 26, 2026

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What would true safety feel like—not just for me, but for all of us?

This episode asks us to imagine safety as more than locked doors or avoiding danger. What would it mean to live without constantly being on guard—to know our children are safe, to move through our neighborhoods without fear, and to believe that when harm happens, healing and restoration are still possible?

Dr. Khalilah T. Muhammad opens our time from her Muslim faith tradition, grounding the conversation in peace and connecting the meaning of Islam itself to PrayerTREK’s call for safety and decarceration.

Cynthia then sits down with Shameka Chapple, whose lived experience with incarceration and faith gives the conversation its heart. Shameka speaks about survival, freedom, the importance of resources for justice-impacted women, and why our communities must continue encouraging, supporting, and praying for one another.

Dr. Darlene Lindsey-Washington closes in prayer for safety, freedom, new beginnings, the breaking of strongholds, and the belief that our past does not have to keep us bound.

[This episode includes discussion of abuse, incarceration, and other potentially difficult experiences. Please care for yourself as you listen.]

PrayerTREK Day 7 | A Prayer for Our Power Oct 26, 2026

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What changes when a Black woman remembers that her voice—and her story—carry power?

Today we move power out of titles, offices, and positions of authority and bring it back to something much closer: our voices, our stories, our choices, and our ability to speak, create, lead, say yes—and say no.

Deborah McGlawn joins Cynthia to share how grief and depression once took up what she describes as “rent-free” space in her heart and mind—and how standing at the base of a waterfall helped her recognize the healing power of nature and begin reclaiming her story. Her pain became passion, purpose, and eventually the work of Ch8sing Waterfalls.

As we walk, Cynthia asks us to consider where disappointment may have made us smaller, quieter, or easier to accept—and what it might look like to take that space back.

Then Rev. Dr. Melva Sampson delivers a powerful closing prayer for women retrieving their power after rejection, disappointment, silence, grief, and systems that welcomed our labor but made no room for our gifts. Her charge is clear: let the women speak, let the women organize, let the women rest—and rise again.

PrayerTREK Day 6 | A Prayer for Where We Belong Oct 26, 2026

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What does it mean to have a place where you feel safe, rooted, and truly at home?

In one of PrayerTREK’s most vulnerable conversations, Kia Ruiz joins Cynthia to talk about home as something deeper than a structure. Kia shares that the home she grew up in did not always feel safe and speaks candidly about childhood abuse, the therapy she pursued before marriage and motherhood, and her intentional decision to create something different for her own family.

From there, the conversation expands into land, generational wealth, environmental privilege, clean air and water, food systems, soil, and what Black families deserve from the places we call home. Kia imagines communities where environmental health and access are not privileges we have to fight for, but part of our birthright.

Today’s reflection asks us to imagine the place where we can be completely safe, rooted, and free to be ourselves.

Rev. Dr. Beverly Patton closes in prayer for those seeking housing, purchasing land, building homes, raising children, establishing families, and creating legacies that future generations can inherit.

[This episode includes discussion of childhood abuse and may be difficult for some listeners.]

PrayerTREK Day 5 | A Prayer for Provision & Freedom Oct 19, 2026

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If money were no longer something you had to fear or simply survive around, what would freedom make possible for you?

Cynthia sits down with Juanita Langston, whose more than 30 years in finance have included work as a stockbroker, day trader, retirement-plan specialist, IRS agent, and financial-literacy educator.

Juanita challenges us to define economic freedom for ourselves. For her, it means moving from “hard work” to “heart work,” having choices, living in alignment with purpose, and recognizing that wealth can include health, time, rest, generosity, and the freedom to decide how we live.

She also gets practical about discipline, debt, retirement savings, investing, and learning to make our money work for us. And when finances—or life—begin to feel overwhelming, she offers a phrase worth carrying: “When in doubt, zoom out.”

Rev. Debra Baynes closes the episode in prayer for wisdom, provision, stewardship, generosity, discipline, community prosperity, and the ability to build a financial legacy that reaches our children, our children’s children, and beyond.

PrayerTREK Day 4 | A Prayer for Nourishment Oct 19, 2026

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What does it mean to be truly nourished—not simply fed?

Cynthia is joined by Beverly Rideaux, founder of Dirt Therapy, for a conversation about food, soil, gardening, community, and healing. Beverly explains how community gardens can create access to fresh food in neighborhoods where healthy options are limited, and shares why putting her hands in the soil has become both a spiritual practice and a source of peace.

The garden has also taught her something about life: there are seasons to plant and seasons to stop fighting, rest, restore, and recharge. Sometimes growth requires nourishment. Sometimes it requires a pivot. And sometimes we simply cannot force something to grow out of season.

The episode invites us to examine our relationship with food without shame or judgment and remember that some of what our grandmothers taught us does not need fixing—it needs remembering.

Chef Ama Shambulia closes with a prayer rooted in gratitude for breath, ancestors, earth workers, farmers, soil, rain, sunshine, food, movement, and the many hands that nourish our communities.

PrayerTREK Day 3 | A Prayer for Our Families Oct 19, 2026

Show notes

What does healing look like across generations?

Cynthia and Nicole Crooks explore family through memory, truth, tradition, and the responsibility we carry toward those coming behind us. Nicole takes us back to Big Mama’s house on Pebble Street in Macon, Georgia—a three-bedroom home that once held more than 30 family members and embodied the village in action.

Their conversation makes room for both what deserves to be preserved and what must change. Nicole reflects on generations that kept family secrets, the importance of knowing the fullness of our stories, allowing children to become who they are, and rooting healing in love, honesty, and belonging.

We are reminded that we do not have to pass everything down simply because it was passed down to us. We can carry forward the love, wisdom, culture, faith, laughter, and joy—and choose to stop what causes harm.

Nekia Owen closes in prayer for families of every shape and size, for truth, generational healing, discernment, love, and the courage to be the one who chooses a different way forward.

PrayerTREK Day 2 | A Prayer for Our Minds Oct 19, 2026

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What would it mean for Black women to experience peace—not simply survive stress?

Cynthia is joined by Iresha Picot for a conversation that challenges one of the most familiar compliments Black women receive: you’re so strong. Iresha asks us to consider the cost of that strength and the difference between being capable of carrying something and actually having the capacity to carry it.

They talk about functioning without truly being well, losing touch with what brings us joy, setting boundaries even when people are disappointed, asking for help before we are drowning, resting before exhaustion, and recognizing that protecting our peace may look much less glamorous than we imagine.

For the woman who keeps saying “I’m fine,” Iresha offers an important reminder: functioning is not the same as being okay, and we deserve care before we reach the breaking point.

Min. Coretta Green gathers those intentions in closing prayer, praying over fear, anxiety, grief, exhaustion, renewed minds, rest, hope, and the courage to ask for help.

PrayerTREK Day 1 | A Prayer for Our Bodies Oct 19, 2026

Show notes

What changes when Black women truly believe our health—and our lives—are worth fighting for?

In our opening walk, Cynthia is joined by Deb Davis and Dr. Naa’irah Muhammad for an honest conversation about what it means to stop putting ourselves at the bottom of the list. Dr. Muhammad shares the unforgettable story of a Black woman experiencing a heart attack who still felt she had to leave the hospital to care for her grandchildren, reminding us why listening to our bodies, knowing our numbers, asking questions, and advocating for ourselves can be lifesaving. Deb reflects on health at 78, learning not to ignore pain, walking through the loss of her son, and the faith that continues to sustain her wellness journey.

Their message is simple: it is never too late to begin. Even one small, sustainable act of care can move us toward the woman we are becoming.

Erica Archie closes the episode in collective prayer, asking us to rest without guilt, listen when our bodies whisper, seek the care we need, and remember that wellness is an act of love—not punishment.

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