Walking Toward Freedom: How GirlTREK Is Honoring Black August

Black August has long been a time to honor Black freedom fighters and remember those impacted by incarceration. For GirlTREK, it is also an invitation to transform movement into meaning. Through poetry, personal testimony, and stories of resilience, members are asked one powerful question: Who are you walking for?

"May the glass between us forget it is glass."

With those words, GirlTREK Co-Founder and President, Vanessa Renee, opened Black August—not with statistics or history, but with a prayer.

Her poem, A Libation for the Ones We Love Inside, invited members across the nation to imagine what it means to love someone separated by prison walls. It imagined visitation glass disappearing, letters arriving warm instead of delayed and the wind carrying love from one side of a prison fence to the other.

May the wind that crosses the yard
be the same wind that crosses my street,
so when it lifts her collar
she knows I sent it.

The poem became an invitation into this year's Black August theme: I Am Walking For.

For GirlTREK, Black August is more than a month of remembrance. It is an opportunity to honor Black freedom fighters, remember political prisoners and recognize the generations of women and families whose lives have been shaped by incarceration. It is also a reminder that walking can be an act of healing, advocacy and love.

Vanessa made that invitation deeply personal.

She shared that throughout Black August she will walk for her mother, whose incarceration forever shaped their family's story. Her reflection reminded members that behind every prison sentence is a family learning how to love across distance, hold onto hope and keep someone from being forgotten.

Walking for Justice-Impacted Women

Few people understand that reality more intimately than Yolanda Williams.

GirlTREK's Special Impact Manager for the Justice Initiative introduced herself as a formerly incarcerated Black woman, sharing that when she attended her first GirlTREK walk she wasn't sure there would be space for someone with her story.

Instead, she found community.

That experience transformed not only how she viewed GirlTREK, but how she viewed herself. She realized justice-impacted women deserved spaces where they could heal openly and be fully seen.

Today, Yolanda leads GirlTREK's "I Am Walking for Justice-Impacted Women" campaign, encouraging women across the country to dedicate their walks to those who are incarcerated, returning home or navigating life after incarceration.

Several years ago, she committed to walking for a different incarcerated woman every day for 100 consecutive days.

One hundred women.

One hundred names.

One hundred reminders that every person deserves to be remembered.

For Yolanda, walking became something larger than fitness. Every mile became an act of witness. Every step became a declaration that these women matter and that their stories deserve to be carried with love rather than forgotten.

The Families Left Behind

While Black August remembers those behind prison walls, GirlTREK also recognizes the families who continue carrying the weight of incarceration every day.

Executive Director Ayanna reflected on her own family, sharing that her sister spent two years in prison while Ayanna was in college.

Today, her niece is 44 years old, yet she still doesn't say the word prison. Instead, she simply talks about the time "when you were away."

Ayanna said families do everything they can to stand in the gap, but the impact on children lingers long after someone comes home.

Still, she also shared something hopeful.

Over the last several years, her sister and niece have built the mother-daughter relationship they always dreamed of having.

Transformation, she reminded members, is possible.

Healing is possible.

Families can find one another again.

Her reflection echoed one of the meeting's most powerful themes: incarceration changes entire families, not just the individual serving a sentence. Yet love, community and intentional care can help repair what prison was never meant to break.

Every Step Carries a Story

As the gathering came to a close, Ayanna reflected on everything members had witnessed together.

They had heard stories of transformation from Yolanda and Dwanda.

They had honored women whose resilience continues to inspire the movement.

They had remembered families still navigating the lasting effects of incarceration.

Most importantly, they had been reminded that every step has the power to carry someone else's story.

With that, she invited every member to make three commitments during Black August:

• Walk five times throughout the month.

• Join GirlTREK's Advocacy Training on Aug. 26 to deepen their understanding of justice and learn how walking and advocacy work together to create change.

• Spend time listening to the stories of justice-impacted women through GirlTREK's special Black August conversation, allowing their experiences to shape not only how members walk, but why they walk.

Black August has always been about remembrance.

GirlTREK is asking women to take that remembrance one step further.

To lace up their shoes.

To speak someone's name.

To carry someone else's story.

Vanessa's poem ends with a vision of freedom that feels both deeply personal and profoundly collective:

May every step I take out here
loosen something in there,
until the door
is just a door,
and she walks through it.

This Black August, every walk becomes more than movement.

It becomes an act of remembrance.

An act of love.

And, ultimately, an act of freedom.