🌟 North Star Faith Community Newsletter November 2025

North Star Community Newsletter November 2025

Welcome to your monthly North Star Community Newsletter — A gathering space for faith-based organizations to come together and share in the joy of health, wellness, and community. All faiths are welcome here!

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“Where there is love, there is freedom.”

Sisters, we’ve made it to Jubilee!

This season, we pause to celebrate the freedom that comes when women of faith—of every tradition, background, and generation—walk together toward healing, justice, and joy. Freedom that is found in our daily steps, in our shared prayers, and in our collective care for one another.

This year, as part of our North Star Faith Community, we experienced a true Jubilee—a season of renewal, restoration, and rejoicing. Together, we built a new rhythm of connection that carried us far beyond the Prayer TREK season. We created a year-long movement of spiritual growth, radical wellness, and community action rooted in love.

✨ Faith in Motion: A Year of Connection and Growth

Across the country, you showed up and led the way:

🌟 Gathering monthly in our North Star Faith Community Gatherings, holding sacred space for reflection, storytelling, and sisterhood.

💫 Walking through 21-Day Challenges, aligning our spirits and bodies for wholeness and peace.

💙 Launching the North Star Crew in the GirlTREK App, anchoring our digital sanctuary of faith and fellowship.

🌻 Training over 95 Faith Crew Leaders, now walking boldly in their cities, houses of worship, and neighborhoods—spreading wellness and joy.

🤝 Partnering with dozens of health and community fairs—bringing GirlTREK’s message of healing and hope to congregations, campuses, and communities.

👣 Hosting Mommy & Me Walks for young mothers and children, nurturing health and love from the womb to the tomb.

🌿 Supporting Seniors and Elders through Walk with a Doc events, empowering them to ask questions, stay active, and model longevity.

🕊️ Launching First Saturday Faith Walks that gather women of all faiths—walking, meditating, chanting, and reflecting together in unity.

✨ Welcoming more than 7,000 participants in PrayerTREK 2025, with over 10,000 listens and downloads, connecting hearts across time zones and traditions.

And through it all, we witnessed faith communities taking bold steps alongside our 10-Point Joy & Justice Agenda—feeding families, advocating for safety and dignity, mentoring youth, healing grief, planting gardens, and creating radical spaces of welcome.

🌍 Where Faith Took the Lead

From Chicago to Jackson, from Atlanta to Fresno, Faith Took the Lead. You built bridges across generations and traditions—reminding us that when women unite in purpose, the world moves toward healing. From the Northeast’s vibrant faith hubs to Southern sanctuaries and Midwestern pews, women of faith took to the streets in sacred solidarity. Our greatest surge of impact came from the Northeast region — where churches, mosques, and community centers linked arms with GirlTREK to put faith in motion and love in action.

🕯️ Gathering Together in Jubilee

We invite you to celebrate all that we’ve accomplished together this year at our last North Star Community Faith Gathering of the year on Tuesday, November 25 at 8 pm ET via zoom, register here. We hope this Jubilee Celebration of Joy reminds us that freedom is a shared practice—of love, of movement, of mutual care. Together, we are walking into a future filled with joy, justice, and abundance for all.

✨ A Word of Gratitude for Our Gratitude Trekkers

Before we close this season, we want to pause and celebrate every sister currently on the Gratitude TREK journey with us! Together, we’re walking in thanksgiving — practicing kindness, giving grace, and offering service to our families, our communities, random strangers, and even to ourselves. These small but powerful daily acts of gratitude are transforming hearts and habits, creating a lifestyle of better health, wellness, and mental well-being.

As you complete this final Gratitude TREK of the year, know that we’re walking right beside you — proud, thankful, and cheering you on to the finish line! As we near the close of this 21-day journey — right before the Black Family 5Ks begins — we pray these days of reflection and service inspire a lasting rhythm of gratitude in every area of your life.

🖤 Join Us for the Black Family 5K!

While celebrating our Jubilee, we’re also looking ahead to what’s next and that’s GirlTREK’s Annual Black Family 5Ks! This is your invitation to gather your faith crews, families, and friends for one final nationwide walk of the season — a joyful, easy, and family-friendly 5K that reminds us what this movement is all about: community, connection, and collective care.

Whether you walk a mile or the full 3.1 miles, and whether it’s with your congregation, your crew, or your kids — we’re asking Faith Leaders across the country to lead the way. Lace up, show up, and bring your community with you. It’s simple, it’s fun, and it’s how we’ll close this season in unity and love. Find all of the information you need here and register at BlackFamily5k.com. Because when faith takes the lead, families follow — and together, we make freedom a tradition.

🌿 A Season to Rest and Replenish

As we close this 2025 Walking Season, we also prepare to honor one of the most sacred principles of our movement — radical self-care.

The Faith Team, along with our entire GirlTREK National Staff, will be entering a six-week Self-Care Sabbatical from December 1 – January 15. During this time, our offices will be closed so that every member of our team can rest, reset, and return restored, rejuvenated and ready to continue serving and advocating for your health and well-being in the new year.

But don’t worry — sisterhood doesn’t pause; it simply breathes. You’ll receive two special emails during the off-season filled with self-care resources, reflections, and tools to help you:

Care for your body, mind, and spirit through the holiday season, and
Set powerful new intentions for the walks, goals, and growth that await in 2026.

We invite you to join us in this rhythm of rest — to reflect, to restore, and to remember that the best way to serve our communities is to begin by caring for ourselves. Enjoy this season of rest, reflection and the sweet gift of time with family and friends.

💙 With Deepest Gratitude

Thank you so much for saying yes, again and again—to yourself, to your sisters, and to this sacred movement of faith and freedom.

Thank you for showing up with your faith, your joy, your vulnerability, your courage, and your love.
Thank you for praying with us, walking with us, laughing with us, and building something brand new from the ground up.

Because of you, the North Star Faith Community has become a living testimony — proof that women of faith, from every background and belief, can come together and change the world one step at a time.

We are so grateful for your light, your leadership, and your continued “yes.” We see you. We honor you. And we cannot wait to walk into a new season — side by side, heart to heart, with faith leading the way.

As we look back on the walking season, our hearts overflow with gratitude. Every story shared, every mile walked, every prayer whispered has shaped this sacred sisterhood into something divine. Thank you for walking by faith, for leading with love, and for believing that the smallest step can change the world.

Keep walking. Keep believing. Keep leading by faith. 💙
We’ll see you in the new season, rested, ready, and walking in joy.

With gratitude and love,
The GirlTREK Faith Team

✨ Faith Takes the Lead: A Jubilee Anthem

A Poem for the North Star Faith Community

She started with one step — trembling, unsure,
But she knew in her bones she was made for more.
One walk became healing, one breath became prayer,
And freedom met her feet right there.

She walked for her mind, her spirit, her health,
To reclaim her joy, to remember herself.
Then she turned back around — like Harriet did,
Saying, “Come on, Sis, we can all be free. Let’s live!”

From one to two, from two to ten,
She gathered her crew and began again.
Each mile a testimony, each stride a song,
Each sister reminding: we are strong.

They rallied their allies, hearts unafraid,
Faith in motion, foundations laid.
From pulpits to porches, the call was clear:
Come outside, Beloved — freedom is here.

Soon churches opened, temples too,
Mosques and circles — faiths made new.
Walls gave way to open skies,
And love became the great ally.

From the womb to the tomb, this movement grew,
Elders and babies — all made new.
We walk with the doctors, the dreamers, the wise,
With care in our hands and fire in our eyes.

We put feet to prayers, compassion to plan,
Turning grace into action wherever we stand.
No woman left behind, no burden unknown,
We rise as one — and we never walk alone.

Our legacy and future — divinely ordained,
Through joy and justice, freedom is gained.
We are lights in the world, radiant and strong,
Healing the nations, carrying hope along.

Step by step, the world transforms,
Faith takes the lead through every storm.
This bond of love will never fade —
Because we are the path our foremothers paved. 🌿💙

- by Cynthia Thompson

For the past three years, GirlTREK Savannah has proudly participated in the annual Faith and Health Coalition Walk with Healthy Savannah. Each year, the event has grown into a meaningful tradition—bringing together churches, families, and community members to celebrate wellness, movement, and sisterhood. Our continued involvement reflects our commitment to building a healthier Savannah through joy, fellowship, and intentional community action.

My own church, Mt. Carmel Methodist, has played a special role in that journey. As a member, Sunday School teacher, and Young Adult/Youth Coordinator, I’ve been deeply invested in weaving health and faith together within our congregation. This year, I had the honor of serving as a speaker at our church’s annual Health Fair, where I led a session on movement and staying active. It was inspiring to encourage our members—especially our seniors—to embrace small, consistent steps toward better health.

Several women at Mt. Carmel Methodist Church are also proud members of GirlTREK, including my mother, Rebecca Davis, my cousin, Pastor Dorsena Grant and our pastor, Pastor Martha Weston who is in full support of this walking ministry. Many women walk as their health allows, often at different times, but always with the same shared purpose.

Wanting to give our church’s sisterhood its own identity within the larger movement, I chose the name Ten Strings for our Mt. Carmel Methodist Church GirlTREK group—a reflection of unity, faith, and strength tied together in purpose.

Most recently, GirlTREK Savannah joined the Georgia Missionary Baptist Convention for a community Health Walk with their Ushers Ministry. It was another opportunity to stand alongside faith-based partners committed to improving health outcomes and strengthening community bonds across Georgia.

Through each walk, fair, and gathering, the message remains the same: movement is ministry, and together, we are walking toward wholeness—one step, one story, and one community at a time.

- Submitted by Ericka Davis

Access previous months North Star Community Newsletters HERE.

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