2025 GIRLS TALK

The 2025 edition of Girls Talk, hosted by Canada Virtuous Women (CAVIWO) in Ottawa, was a powerful demonstration of what community engagement looks like when women gather to speak honestly about the things that shape their families and their wellbeing. For an afternoon, the room held mothers, mentors, daughters, and community members who came not to be spoken at, but to speak with one another about mental health, parenting, and the rhythms of daily life that too often go unnamed.

It was a great use of our time, and a reminder that the most meaningful conversations are sometimes the ones we have been postponing. Girls Talk created the space for those conversations, and the women who filled it brought their full attention, their questions, and their willingness to be honest about the challenges they carry at home and in their hearts.

We are grateful for every attendee who made the time to be present, for our amazing speakers who shared their expertise with warmth and candor, and for our collaborators from Kingdom Men, whose partnership helped shape the depth and direction of the day. When organizations with a shared commitment to family, faith, and community come together, the result is more than the sum of its parts. The collaboration made the conversation richer, and the room more welcoming, than it could have been alone.

The heart of the afternoon was a conversation on mental health and godly parenting, two topics that touch nearly every woman in the room and that are rarely discussed together. The speakers opened by grounding the conversation in a simple question: what is mental health? The answer is not a clinical definition alone. It is the daily experience of managing stress, naming emotion, recognizing when something is wrong, and knowing where to turn. For many of the women present, the first step was permission to use the words at all.

The conversation moved into the terrain of triggers and denials, the ways we push away what we are not yet ready to face. Speakers named the patterns that so many recognize in hindsight: the exhaustion we call laziness, the anxiety we call being too busy, the sadness we tell ourselves will pass. They invited the room to consider that denial is not weakness but protection, and that the work of healing begins when the protection is no longer needed.

From there, the discussion turned to the questions every modern parent is wrestling with: how much time should children spend on a phone, and at what age should a child be given one at all. There were no easy answers, because there are none. What the room offered instead was honesty. Mothers shared their doubts, their rules, and their failures, and left with a sense that they were not alone in the difficulty. The conversation was not about control. It was about intention, about deciding as a family what technology should serve and what it should not.

Some key takeaways carried the afternoon home. When you feel depressed, connect with nature, even briefly, because the body and the mind respond to the outdoors in ways that a closed room cannot offer. Do your favorite exercise, because movement is medicine, and it does not have to look like a gym. Involve your children in exercise, because the habits they watch you build are the ones they will one day build for themselves. And teach them the kingdom culture, because the values we plant in childhood are the foundation that holds when the storms come.

Girls Talk 2025 was a reminder that community is not an event we attend. It is a practice we build together, one conversation at a time. We are already looking forward to the 2026 edition, and to the women, the speakers, and the conversations that will fill that room next. Until then, we carry the lessons of this one, and we keep talking.

Written by

CAVIWO Leadership Team

Contributor to the CAVIWO community sharing stories of hope, resilience, and advocacy.