Do you yearn for meaningful connections beyond quick coffee catch-ups and surface-level networking? Are you surrounded by women in your daily life - at work, in your neighborhood, or through your children - yet missing those deeper bonds of mutual support? Do you dream of having a powerful circle of women to celebrate your wins, lift you through challenges, and inspire your growth?
"A huddle is a place where women can become energized by the mere fact of their coexistence," explains
, former CNN anchor and author of Huddle: How Women Unlock Their Collective Power, when we interviewed her for this podcast. "While huddles are productive and create conditions for change, they also create space where women can simply bear witness for each other, or quietly sustain each other's very survival."Through her research traveling across America interviewing women from Congress to Hollywood to professional sports, Brooke discovered that huddles take many forms. Sometimes they're structured mastermind groups driving professional change, other times they're informal circles of friends supporting life transitions, and often they're community networks creating local impact. What unites them all is women choosing to drop competition in favor of collaboration, replacing isolation with connection, and transforming individual challenges into collective strength.
For example, Brooke spent time with nineteen Black women lawyers in Houston who formed a powerful huddle while campaigning to become judges. Despite being discouraged from stumping together, these women:
Created a group text chain to ask each other for help and advice during campaigns and later while presiding over cases
Shared childcare duties so others could knock on doors and campaign
Coordinated their messaging and amplified each other's voices
Organized a powerful photo shoot in the Thurgood Marshall School of Law courtroom that went viral
Called themselves "Black Girl Magic" and defied odds to all win their elections
"A rising tide lifts all ships," explains Brooke. "Rather than seeing each other as competition, these women linked arms and weren't threatened by one another. They showed me how to ask for help, which we women are often terrible at because we don't want to burden others who are already spinning 80 plates."
To begin building meaningful huddles in your own life, Brooke recommends taking the following steps:
Prioritize Sacred Space: Set aside regular time for connection, whether it's a monthly dinner, weekly walk, or daily check-in text. What matters is creating consistent opportunities to share, support, and witness each other's lives.
Practice Vulnerability: Start by sharing one challenge you're facing or joy you're celebrating. When we open up first, we create safety for others to bring their full selves - struggles, fears, hopes, and dreams.
Listen Without Fixing: Rather than jumping to solutions, practice holding space for each other's experiences. Sometimes the greatest gift we can give is simply bearing witness to another's journey with compassion and understanding.
Take Practical Action: Move beyond "let me know if you need anything" to specific support. Offer to pick up groceries during a hard week, review a difficult email, or simply sit together in silence during challenging times.
"When we huddle together, we don't walk away with less," shares Brooke. "We create more opportunities for everybody. You're not alone in feeling all the things - we're right here with you."
For more of Brooke's wonderful work, read her book "Huddle: How Women Unlock Their Collective Power," follow her weekly writing on "Unraveling with Brooke Baldwin" on Substack, and listen to the full podcast episode for more huddle insights.
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