The Parlay Effect: How Female Connection Can Change The World

Parlay (verb) to increase or otherwise transform into something greater. From the French word parler, meaning to speak or to talk.

This definition is very important to the book The Parlay Effect: How Female Connection Can Change the World by Anne Devereux-Mills. In her candid story about her physical and emotional collapse, the realization that she needed more meaningful connection with other women in her life, and the subsequent founding of Parlay House, Devereux-Mills explores what happens when women support other women and the exponential effects of that connection.

The Parlay Effect is a powerful story of the strength in female connection. It’s easy to overlook connection in our lives, or for social media to trick us into believing relationships more meaningful than they actually are. As stated in the book, networking is not connecting; networking goes wide, but connecting goes deep. The book examines connection on a sociological and scientific level, also exploring self-compassion and mindfulness. While not a long book, it’s a profound one, encouraging readers to do deep work on their own values and abilities, and being open to mentors, or mentoring, paying attention to places in their lives where they can “pay it forward” in more ways than just giving money. Helpful questions to ask and steps to take at the end of each chapter will lead readers to do a close self-examination and deeply consider their thoughts and actions.

While this book is terrifically empowering for women to go take action and connect with other women, one shortcoming is that it doesn’t provide much practical advice for doing so. For instance, if you don’t discuss work, what do you discuss? It has great examples of situational awareness and steps to consider when opportunities for connecting and helping arise, but for the woman who doesn’t socialize much with other women, for example, doesn’t work in an office or have a large network of friends, the steps seem more difficult to implement. Also if the other women aren’t doing the same kind of self-development or are unaware of Parley House, creating that uplifting environment among one’s acquaintances may prove more challenging. Yet this book still has great value in getting readers to recognize the places in their lives where such opportunities for interpersonal and social change may arise.

The Parlay Effect is wonderfully written, a powerful story, and terrifically uplifting in its call to create sustainable change through kindness and reciprocity. As Devereux-Mills says, “We are stronger when we are connected.” This book might help us all connect just a little bit more.