 Good evening. Welcome to Girls Inc. Thank you so much for spending your evening here with us today to talk about the pressures of being perfect, breaking the super cycle. My name is Rhonda Williamson and I am the president and CEO for Girls Inc. of San Antonio. Our mission is inspiring all girls to be strong, smart, and bold, which we put our mission into practice through what we call the Girls Inc. Experience. This experience equips girls to navigate social, gender, and economic barriers and grow into healthy, educated, and independent adults, which are things we want for all the children's lives. That experience is rooted in our fundamental belief in girls' rights and abilities, and the girls' bill of rights is depicted behind you, painted by our girls. It is our conviction that girls themselves must leave the work to advocate for a more equitable world. At Girls Inc., we have a vision for a world in which every girl values her whole self and her special strengths, has opportunities and access to develop her potential, to break past serious obstacles, and lead healthy, educated, and successful lives. The lasting difference that we make for girls, make with girls, is what sets us apart. Last year we served 3,000 girls, I mean last year we served 3,000 girls aged 6 to 18 in the Alamos City. Girls who now have the opportunities and access to develop their special strengths, to break past barriers, and most importantly achieve their full potential. These girls that help others as they were helped, all along the way, thereby creating positive change, breaking the cycle of limitations for their families, communities, institutions, and all of us. So why are we here? In 2002, Girls Inc. National conducted a nationwide study of school age girls about the mounting pressures of expectations. This study created a report called the Supergirls a Woman. What they found was that girls experience intense pressure at every younger age. To be everything, to everyone, all of the time. While stereotypes about girls' leadership capabilities and math and science abilities appear to have diminished in the past decade, expectations about physical perfection and dressing right and being thin seem to have increased. Stereotypes about girls needing to speak softly, not to brag, and to play caretaker roles seem to persist. Girls can do anything as long as they also conform to traditional notions of femininity. Girls feel it is their job to please the people around them. This creates constant pressure on girls to silence themselves, to act as if they have no feelings or that their feelings don't matter, and to learn to please everyone but themselves. Eve Ensler is one of my very favorite writers. I am an emotional creature, the secret lies of girls around the world, she writes. I have done a lot of thinking about what it means to please, to please, to embody the wish or will of somebody other than yourself. To please the fashion setters, we starve ourselves. To please boys, we push ourselves when we're not ready. To please the popular girls, we end up acting mean to our best friends. To please our parents, we become insane over achievers. If you are trying to please, how do you take responsibility for your own needs? How do you even know what your own needs are? I think the act of pleasing makes everything murky. We lose track of ourselves. We stop buttering declaratory sentences. We stop directing our lives. We wait to be rescued. We forget what we know. We make everything okay rather than real. This is the pressure to be perfect that our girls face. If they're trying to make everything perfect, we make everything okay rather than real. I think we can all relate to the pressure our girls feel. And you're here tonight because you care about helping to make that better. I'm sure you've noticed our incredible friends back here in the back. NowPassSA is here live streaming tonight's event. So when that moment of oh wow I wish I could watch that again happens and it will with this incredible group of panelists you can visit NowPassSA.org and watch that video. NowPass is your local public television but on the internet. NowPassSA's mission is to promote and facilitate an inclusive civic conversation by empowering neighbors to identify common issues and store information through education, training, community news, events, and multimedia. It's now my privilege to introduce you to tonight's distinguished panel. Charlotte Ann Lucas is right here. She is the NowPassSA managing director. She was selected to lead NowPassSA in 2009. Charlotte Ann wrote her first news story on a manual typewriter and has taught online journalism, web design, digital storytelling, interviewing, and content management systems at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, St. Mary's University in San Antonio, and Texas A&M University San Antonio. She worked for newspapers in Philadelphia, Dallas, Phoenix, San Francisco, and San Antonio and her freelance freelance writing has appeared everywhere from the New York Times to the Auckland, New Zealand Herald. Her journalism has earned her dozens of awards including being named the finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. In 1997, she became the first woman business editor of the San Antonio Express News. Charlotte Ann is also an all-star advocate for girls and girls, teaching them how to run equipment and manage a live stream as well as good media literacy, the importance of a digital footprint, and interviewing skills. Next we have Cindy Stinchula. Cindy is president founder of Stinchula & Associates. She's a nationally known trainer, inspirational speaker, and consultant. Her clients include Fortune 100 companies, not-for-profit organizations, and small businesses. Cindy grew up in a small town in southwestern Pennsylvania. After college, she moved all by herself to Texas to build her career. It was during this time that Cindy learned the importance of figuring out who she was, what was important to her, and how to live up to her values, even if they didn't agree with what others wanted for her. For the last 17 years, Cindy has owned her own business called Stinchula & Associates. She speaks, coaches, and facilitates for companies and not-for-profits to help them figure out what they want to stand for, and then she walks beside them as they achieve it. Next we have Maria Barrett. Maria was born and raised in San Antonio. She is the youngest of six children and was lovingly raised by her mother in single-parent home. Early on, Maria developed an understanding that every day brings within choices which shape who we become, how we face pressures, and the positive or negative mark we leave upon the world. For nearly 20 years, Maria has been in marketing for professional service firms. During this time, she has helped each company build its corporate brand while assisting its team members with building their own personal brands. Maria is passionate about giving to others, and she is currently a big sister for Big Brother's big sisters. Last we have Leafa Harrelson. Leafa is Security Service Federal Credit Union, honored Leafa Harrelson as Central Region Manager of the Year 2013. She currently serves as Business Development Manager for the Credit Union, and she has led countless efforts to expand financial literacy and education through the Credit Union's market in three states. Her efforts helped the Credit Union receive the Dora Maxwell Award for Outstanding Social Responsibility and Honorable Mention for the Dayhart Dean's Youth Financial Education Award awarded by the Credit Union National Association. Leafa is a Girls' Inc. of San Antonio board member and the force behind the newly expanded Girls' Inc. Girls Empowerment Conference Girl with a Purpose. All of the panelists were chosen because of their ability to relate to our girls and their unique personal stories that won't appear in their professional bios. These are all women who have achieved great things and accomplished their goals. But, but they learn to listen to who they really are and what they really want instead of being perfect or that super girl that others wanted them to be. They became amazing and real instead of perfect and are happy because of it. We work every day to inspire strong, smart and bold girls in San Antonio. As part of this, we also get to work with incredible young women every day. We have a group of 13 to 18-year-old girls who are truly dedicated to the Girls' Inc. Mission. These girls are known as MVPs, mentors, valuing peers. This group of girls gives thousands of hours of service to our community each year. They participate as advisors to our program and learn about leadership, all the while acting as leaders themselves. The MVPs are the ones who put forward this topic, did the research on it, crafted all of the questions, and I have two of our incredible MVPs who are going to be your talk show hosts for the evening. It's my privilege today to introduce you to two of our MVPs, Elise Charles and Maxine Sanchez. Maxine and Elise will be your moderators tonight. Together with their MVPs sisters, they have developed a list of questions that they care deeply about, proposed to our esteemed panel. To begin our town hall, I'd like to turn it over to Elise Charles and Maxine Sanchez. Hello, my name is Elise Charles and one thing I like to do is cook and pressure that I'm currently facing. It's probably school and getting new grades. Okay, hi, I'm Maxine. I go to Highlander High School. I'm a freshman. One thing that I like to do is I love to play softball and one pressure that I'm struggling with in school also in my grades, keeping them up with sports and then just all the pressure going out like through school, messing up my grades, I guess I should say. Do our speakers have any pressures that you're currently facing? You know I was preparing for today's presentation and I didn't have enough time to do everything that I wanted to do and that just seems to be an ungrowing pressure for me. There is so much that I want to do and there just aren't enough hours in the day and on top of that I've had to surrender that there's so much I want to do and I'll never do it all perfectly. I think we're all under pressures of different kinds. My personally is pressure on health, taking care of myself and not trying to be skinny and the supermodel and all that but just having good health, good cholesterol, good blood pressure and making sure that I get enough sleep and active because you know when you're passionate about things you want to do so much that you have to realize your limitations and set what is the most important and sometimes you have to give up a few things. You know I agree with what both of you said I mean there's never enough time and there's never there's always way too many things on my to-do list. Right now my pressure is to make sure everything is on my to-do list so it doesn't wake me up at four o'clock in the morning but the hopes I forgot to put that on my to-do list. And one of the other things that's kind of out there on my to-do list is and if you don't get exercise and take good care of your heart you're not going to be here to finish that to-do list. That's good. Now that's actually a very good one. For me I am actually a single parent raising two boys on my own and just balancing the demands of the expectations of having a corporate career where the hours are long and can go into the evenings or the weekends in addition to making sure that my children see enough of me and have that quality time is always something I struggle with because for me I realize that I'm going to blink and both of my boys are going to be young men off on their own and I just have such a desire that when they look back at life that they still remember that the best part of growing up was that their mom was there. So that's always a constant struggle for me. So what keeps you motivated to be yourself? So really it's actually my mistakes that I've made along the way that keep me most motivated. I think when anybody makes mistakes in life and you feel that pain of I didn't like what I did or I didn't like the choices I made or I didn't like what perhaps I did to somebody else unknowingly or knowingly that starts to build something in you that makes you realize I don't want to do that again. That's not a road I want to cross again and so oftentimes I find that my motivation is don't go back down that path. If you didn't like the path then go back down the path and that's a great motivation. It's interesting you talk about motivating motivates me to stay as myself because I've experienced my life like peeling an onion. Just when I think I figured out this next level of me and this new exciting aspect of my personality or my life another layer is peeled and I go deeper and so I think my motivation is to continue to do that deeper journey into who I am in relation to the world as it is today and and what I have to offer the world. I'm going to agree that Cindy mine is passion finding something that is very passionate to me and giving back to others. That is so motivating to me because then I get to see the benefit things that I do to help others. What motivates me to stay true to myself is that it's a lot easier than trying to be somebody else because then I don't have to remember who I was trying to be. Very true. Very true. There's wisdom. When did you decide you want you wanted to be yourself and how? I'll start that one. There was a couple of times in my life. One was in high school when I was practicing to be the cheerleader and run for cheerleading. I had three brothers who were big football players and I could have been the cheerleader but like a week before tryouts I just knew it wasn't me so I quit and decided that was not a route I wanted to take and the second one was during my career I was trying to be this manager I thought everybody needed me to be and what the book said it is to be a manager and realized you know I was wearing a mask and not just really being who I was and until I took that mask off and really looked at myself and realized what strengths I brought to the table and what values I bring and how I could help others then I realized you know what it was that I needed to do. How do you speak up to teachers when they are treating you unfairly or disrespectfully? Now I have to go old school on that because I calculated and it's been 36 years since I've been in high school okay so I started when you know I graduated when I was two but in any event you know a couple things that come to mind for me one is teachers are human too so we have to realize that they're not always going to be right and they're not always going to do the right thing. I think the other thing too is you know part of finding your voice is in those moments where you have the opportunity to speak up and stand up for yourself and it's how you respond in those moments to me that makes the difference in your life story for you so to me I you know I think that it's about you knowing when it's time to take your voice and also to be able to speak to your teacher one-on-one in truth I think going one-on-one with your teacher is important the first time and to speak to them from your truth I think the second time around if nothing changes and the second time around you take a friend with you you take a friend with you to have the conversation so you've got somebody else to support you and then the third time to me it's just about giving them grace and forgiving them and moving on because I don't know about the rest of you but I've had several bad teachers in my life and I can't even remember their names today so remember that it's not forever it's just for a semester. I actually was going to make a comment but I think Cindy just you put it completely in a bet shell I mean that's that's very true it's very true you've got to remember that it's okay to be vulnerable you've got two choices you know I think who I was in high school my first reaction probably honestly would have been to try and step up and fight back publicly because they I felt like they were attacking me as you grow up in life and you mature what you realize is that's not a great tactic because that's only going to immediately put them on the defense as well and it is wise to have vulnerable conversations and respectful manners at the right moment with someone so I think that's what Cindy was touching on was you can take that conversation and you can take the truth of how you feel and when you're telling the truth of how you feel that's the vulnerability that I'm talking about you're opening up and allowing yourself to be vulnerable to this individual by just being honest and in most instances what you find is the person recognizes that what you've just done wasn't an easy thing to do and so then instead of fighting you back because you attack them and they attack back instead they start to show in most instances empathy back because they recognize that it took a lot of maturity to do what you did and you end up getting a lot further than if you try and and fight it out because then nobody wins and in most instances when you're putting an adult with a child the child rarely wins even if the child is absolutely right just because of the way it was managed I would add that it continues after that conversation to take a parent or counselor and have a conversation with them as well yep yep agreed what do you do when milky teachers treat you in inappropriately what do you mean by inappropriately treating you different from other girls by body wise like these days the teachers are much younger so I think it goes back to what we were talking about before where you have to have the conversation with that teacher but if it continues you do need to take a parent or counselor report it and it's really inappropriate and not continue to take it and and you know one of the things that comes to me is it is so easy to take on shame around that thinking that you did something that's making this male teacher respond to you in that way don't hide don't hide from the truth because otherwise later in life it does catch up with you you wear this veil of shame that really just exactly so you know two words I want you to remember is don't hide you have nothing to be ashamed of and it is important once again that you find your voice and you take care of what needs to be done does that help yeah yeah I think Cindy's right we all have both men and women if somebody is crossing into a zone that makes us feel uncomfortable we have every right to say you've crossed the line I'm not comfortable with that type of behavior I'm not comfortable with the way you're making me feel and I'm going to ask that you not do that again because now you've spoken up and you established the line if they continue to cross the line you know if that ever spirals into something that becomes more serious and you had to end up talking with police and so forth that would be a question they would ask you was did you establish the line did you tell them that you didn't accept it and then you can honestly say yes I confronted them and I said it was making me in the feel uncomfortable and I felt it was inappropriate but they did not cease the second you say that you took that action it now pushes it back on that individual because you were vocal you expressed your your your absolute of you can't come past here let me add to that just a bit what what they were talking about both of them talked about earlier was saying I'm not comfortable with that this makes me feel uncomfortable as opposed to attacking that person by saying you're a jerk for looking at me like that right which puts it in a hole another crazy land but when you're saying I'm not comfortable with that behavior or you're making me feel very uncomfortable when you do that you're talking about your feelings and you're not labeling them and sending it into a really unconstructive conversation and to take your life story zoom ahead a couple of years call it 30 years you may still be faced with the same inappropriate behavior no matter where you go so the skills that you are going to challenge yourself to learn today are going to be something you're carrying your toolkit throughout your entire life am I right ladies absolutely absolutely when you were our age in school what would you say to someone who tried to put you down because you are a girl when I how old are you you're 15 I'm 14 14 okay I had big brothers I would beat them up so nobody really messed with me yeah I'm gonna have to say I probably would have pushed back at that point in my life you know just trying to prove you can't push me around type thing but like we've talked about there's some maturity that comes with life and life lessons and I think what you learn is now I actually look deeper I have found and this applies to both men and women I have found when someone is ridiculing you or demeaning you and making you feel bad about something in your life you got to go a little further and you've got to understand that there's something driving them to be like that and it's probably has nothing to do with you and it probably has to do I mean I've seen beautiful women criticize other women and and the other woman thinks well she's criticizing me because she's beautiful and and I'm not as pretty as her and I always think no no no no no no no she would find the beauty in you too if there wasn't something insecure in her I recently saw a show on you probably aren't familiar with a program called TEDx but they get some of the most powerful people around the world to come and speak to individuals and so they actually had a supermodel come and speak and these individuals only have about five minutes to just really empower you with something and all this supermodel said was if you ever went to a runway shoot the day that there was one happening and you went to the dress room where there was all those supermodels you've just entered a room of some of the most insecure women in the world there will always be a driving force behind why people ridicule someone else girls or guys well and it's interesting because like like I grew up with brothers so it was just a lifestyle choice okay the girls would be put down it wasn't until I moved to Dallas after college and I was working in an office building in the 36th floor the Brian Tower in downtown Dallas woohoo every farm girls dream and I worked myself from a position where I was just a secretary typing on a typewriter you may not remember those it was an electric typewriter but typing on a typewriter and I can remember the first meeting that I was invited to participate in with the other with officers in the audience that they all happen to be white men who wear suits and ties and I can remember going into the meeting and I know I'm a participant and one older a gentleman came into the room he was also participant in the meeting and he looked at me and said honey will you make sure we get some coffee in here and that's when I realized wow people have different lenses based on gender or whatever and and like Maria said I was a student enough to know that this was about him it wasn't about me so I excused myself and I left the room talked to the secretary who takes care of that and came back in and the man stopped the meeting and said where's the coffee and I said I made arrangements with the person who's responsible for that to bring it in the room now where are we on the agenda I think sometimes we just have to extend grace when comments like that are made and just take care of things in a way that doesn't make a big scene about it but in the moment they go why did I misread that and so that would be my challenge to y'all I would just want to say or add to that is if you do talk to someone who is really beautiful and has everything you think you want and you really ask them about how they feel about how beautiful they are they would want to be taken seriously for something else not based on their beauty because everybody's always saying how beautiful they are and beauty only lasts for so long in life does saying no get easier as y'all get older and half no it does not get easier to say no other than you realize that if you don't say no when you need to say no you're going to end up places you don't want to be and you know like I said earlier how do you get motivated to stay on track and it's I said you don't want to repeat the same mistakes and so you know it doesn't get easier you just gain a stronger wisdom of the importance of it and so that's it really becomes a driver of yeah if I don't say no I'm going to end up places I don't want to be doing things I don't want to do actually just to almost finish that sentence so what happens more and more the older I get is that I think it all the way through and say well if I say yes then what oh yes I was there before no I don't want to do that so it's that I don't want to repeat it and I don't want a bad outcome and I'm more able to at least pause to say what if what I found interesting when you gave us the questions in advance you said just say no this saying isn't as easy as it is saying this isn't as easy as it sounds whether we're talking about drugs sex alcohol or anything and I have to tell you the the older I got as that onion lair came off and I dig deeper in it is so much easier to say no to drugs and sex and all of that kind of stuff my my heart always wants to say yes because I grew up a people pleaser and so I want to be there for anybody who says they have a need when the reality is my mind is saying and how are you going to do that going back to my initial what my pressure is I don't have enough time to do everything that I want to do so getting back to your context around saying no to drugs and sex and things like that one of the things that I really wish that I had in my mind and heart when I was your age was that I need to say no at least three times before I even think about saying yes I think that that gives you an opportunity to just see reactions and see who your real friends are because when I think back at times where I said yes to some of these things these people weren't my friends they were just lonely or needed somebody to come along so say no three times and see what happens I don't think it was on but we heard I think it's easier to say no it's easier to say no now because of our experiences we have probably have said yes to some of those things when we were your age and have learned from those experiences but I will tell you things have changed drastically from when we were younger to where you are now when you say yes to drugs now it could turn you into an addict immediately if you say yes now to sex you're a mother without a husband and you have a lifetime of responsibility you never thought of just by saying yes you know the same thing with alcohol everything is so different now the drugs are stronger the liquors stronger you know sex is everything everybody wants it now now now and I think you have to realize it's not worth all that responsibility at your age you you will say yes to something that you will say in 20 years I should have said no because we all know how do you not judge others based on their actions you know um safe is a big part of the driving factor for the core and ethics of what really helps me decide what to do each and every day and I always see the judging component as the not judging is probably more for me than them because of the fact that when I judge them I have to stop and ask myself is there anything in my life that could be judged and the answer is there's probably something in everybody's life that others could judge us for but um I always remembered my mother telling me so if you treat them the way that they treated you if you lash back out because they misjudge you they started alive they had a preconceived notion about you aren't you just ending up in the muck in the mire with them and I can remember thinking I have no idea what she is talking about but in essence what she was saying was as soon as I did it back to them I judged them because of their bad actions either to me or to somebody else that I saw them do it to and I acted as badly to them then I just made the same bad choices they did and when you look at life and think is is the situation or is that individual worth me coming down to their level and doing that and changing how the world sees me from perhaps respectful trustworthiness or things of that nature then it starts to become much smaller what the impact of their judging is it's like I said earlier it's almost like you take it a step further and you think why are they judging you know or why am I going to judge or why are they having the bad actions there's always a driver behind it do you want to end up right there with them because you judged them how do you how do you get your parents or other adults to not judge your friends until they get to know them okay yeah first of all let's accept the reality that our parents are going to judge our friends we've got parents in the audience right you're going to judge them my daddy used to tell me the story that if one person tells you you have a tail like a doggie tail on your rear end that you can tell them your craze second person that tells you you have a tail you might want to think twice about it third person that tells you you better look behind you because it's hanging there okay all of that to say that if you're hearing from a lot of different people some concerns about your friends take a moment and do yourself the favor of finding out if there's any truth to what they're saying just step back and see if there's any truth to it that's one side of it the other side of it is realizing we can't make anybody do or think anything that we want them to think in other words you have no control over what anybody else thinks or does and if you remember that I've saved you a lot of therapy bills in the future okay because the reality is our parents are going to think and say whatever they want about our friends I think the key is once again for us to model or let our parents see what's good about this friendship and just through our behavior words aren't going to mean anything our behavior is so I know that one of the things that both of you said is you're struggling keeping good grades because of all your activities do you think your parents would quit complaining about who your friends are if all of a sudden she saw you studying with your friends and your grades went up I think that would send the signal to a parent that these are good people that I want my girls to hang with so you know I think it's the double-edged sword find the truth in it and then secondly do what you can to show that this is a good friend for you sorry I'm going to shut up I actually was going to add I had this conversation recently with my youngest son and he was asking me about the fact that there's something that I've always said no you're not ready for it you're not ready for it you're not ready for it and he asked me could we have just an open conversation and I said sure I always am going to welcome you to have an open conversation with me well the open conversation was but you've raised me well you always role model what I need to see so do you not believe that I'm going to make the same wise choices you've got to give me space to prove to you that I can make those choices and so where we where we ended up at the end of the conversation was I said that was a very mature conversation for someone who is in sixth grade and I appreciate that and so you're right because he also mentioned did you not learn some of your best lessons in life by stumbling and falling and I said I did so we came up with an agreement of giving him a little bit more space but him also understanding I wasn't just going to give him free reign because of the fact that as we grow older and you will too you gain wisdom and out of that gaining wisdom and out of the love for your children I am going to stop and stand in the way of my child and a disaster if I can see that that's a disaster but he was right he deserved a little amount of space to show to me that I have raised him well and was learning the lessons now if he doesn't prove it that would be another discussion but until that it was a very valid point I had one more thing because I think it never stops about parents and our friends and there have been times when my father traveled from New Jersey to Dallas to visit me because he really really really wanted to go out to lunch with one of my friends Molly Ivan's one of the great writers of Texas and he wanted to have lunch with her and you know was like please can I go out to lunch with her friends which is really awesome and and then just just a few weeks ago I persuaded him to take another look at one of my friends actually it's a family member who I said hey you know don't don't prejudge her I think that you might look again actually what she's done with her life is very similar to what I've done with my life even though she was in a completely different career she was spent her life trying to help people and he did and it was really awesome so I just want to add to that I would say to your parents is what is it that you see that I don't see what is it that you're fearing with my friendship with this person so that you can really understand where they're coming from and I think it's very important to have those kind of conversations with your family your father your mother whoever's raising you so that you get their perspective and you're not just upset because they told you not to have this person and then I would also question you as to why are you defending your friendship what is it that you're thinking they're going to see that you're worried about that one every once in a while when it comes to experiences such as drinking trying to judge and having sex it is easier to just get it over with what would you say to these girls I would go I would get back to that initial conversation I had before is when you just say yes and get it over with yes could be having a child in the response way of raising a child the drugs could be becoming addicted or ending up in a hospital killing yourself drinking could turn into just numbing and trying to escape so to just have that pause a attitude about something could lead to financial burden emotional physical and long-term emotional therapy therapy one of the things that I think it's important for all of us as girls and women to keep in mind is we've all said yes when we should have said no and it's part of who we are today because we made that decision then and hopefully we've learned from it I think there is an element of if for some reason you do say yes and then you go why did I do that you have to learn to forgive yourself and learn from those mistakes because nothing is so bad that it's the end of your life there are always people who are around to help you work through if you've said yes and you meant to say no girls Inc this is a great place to be because there are people here who understand you know we've got the MVPs here at 14 and 15 years of age who are here to help support you through those kinds of things as well as adult women but I think it's just real important to remember that no doesn't I mean yes doesn't change everything about your life and your life is over that you have to learn to forgive yourself learn from it and move on I think it also you mentioned earlier sometimes we encounter things that become a little bit of a test of where your good friends are and where your your friends are that you probably can go ahead and let go and move on to better friends I can remember back in our age it was cigarette smoking because you weren't supposed to have be able to smoke until a certain age but you know so many people did it and you know I can remember saying yes when I probably should have said no and immediately decided okay that was the worst experience ever I don't want to say yes even though you know I had friends who continued and so forth I just simply said I don't want to do it either you could accept that I don't want to do it or you know I would have I would have stopped hanging around them what I found was I had loving friends that through a situation such as that realized that when I said I'm not comfortable with that I don't want to do that you guys can do that I don't want to go there I don't want to do that you know over time it was just that they understood that I had things that didn't make me feel comfortable but they loved me for me and I can say that those same friends were in our late 40s and we still hang out with each other because we've learned to love and exhaust each other but it was a process that we began when we were in middle school and that's a long long time and I think sometimes when you say no that other people who are along with it will then go okay well I don't want to even do it yet so you may start a tradition where you're going no no no we're not going to do that but just stepping up and in saying what you value and what you believe in what values have helped you overcome and drive through high pressure sticky situations I'd say one of my values that happened to that is friendships and family because when you're in that kind of pressure and challenges with some of the things that life hits you with those are the people who help you through it and those are the people who will call you out right your good friends will call you out in a nice way not in a mean way they'll just tell you hey okay you shouldn't be doing that or that's not good for you or hey that's great we need to take that and run right so that's mine I don't know what yours is Maria mentioned values and you know I have to tell you it wasn't until I was maybe 39 40 years old that I finally got grounded in something I mean I just was going along with life and whatever came my way I would bend with it without really having a firm foundation and it was through my acceptance of Christ as my savior that I came to find what grounded me I needed something in my life that was bigger than me and in addition to that I found a group of girlfriends and we are a community that walk beside each other we have been there for parents deaths for our own illnesses and surgeries thank you and you know whether whether if children that's right and whether it's whether you choose to find who you are through a faith experience or you do work on values the audience that's here how many of you were here for the girls conference that we had when was I think in october 5th they did this really cool activity with values cards where you sorted through and you found the top five values that were most important to you there are a lot of activities I know we've got card decks available so any of you that want them please make sure you get them when you leave but I think it's it's a really good effort get a girlfriend and do this together and figure out what's important to you you don't have to agree everybody has their own values and that's what makes you unique when I was your age I wish that I would have had an experience something like this to challenge me to think about that because to me it's all about where you're grounded and and what's your true north what was one major mistake you made in your life and how did you learn for it learn from it Jeff all that question I thought one which one yeah I was going to say we'd have to be here for a few hours and that'd just be on mine you know for for me probably one that was pivotal and and I took the question as you know what did I learn from it I'm still learning from it today and it was something that actually happened to me in college I come from a very very analytical family and so my whole family is filled with CPAs and bankers and aeronautical engineers and so math comes easy for all of us right and so math came easy for me as well and so I thought for sure when I entered college that I was going to be some type of finance major because you know that just seemed to be the thing that was in my family but I got to that point in my college career where you had to make the last decision so that you could take all the specialized courses and I struggled as a matter of fact I struggled so much I got lost because I looked around and I assumed that every single one of my friends and my whole family that somehow magically they knew what they were supposed to be the rest of their lives and I just didn't and the reason I didn't was because every time I imagined myself being the age that I am right now being a banker or putting financial numbers in a box I would hyperventilate because I would be like I just I can't see myself doing that for the rest of my life and so I knew it was not for me and so I actually went to my counselor at college and I said I don't know what to do and his answer to me was nobody can answer this question for you but you and so I felt defeated I absolutely felt defeated and I felt extremely lost and so I made the choice and today I would say it was an absolutely wrong choice I've said it for many years but I dropped out of college and I said I'm going to go figure it out instead of just trying to still stay the path and kind of stumble along until I could get there even if even if I did have a degree in finance that didn't mean I had to be in finance for the rest of my life and so the reason I said it was a mistake is what ended up happening was I then for the rest of my life had to work twice as hard everywhere I was to prove that I was an intelligent woman because I didn't have a degree it's just the way that the world works you know you walk in and you say I graduated from here and I have this degree and you immediately get a different viewpoint than someone like me but you know I I do now have a respected career but nobody knows but me how many lunches I work through just to teach myself stuff you know that was when computers were just coming out I literally took a manual for computer and I read the pages and taught myself how to work the computer you know I went into people's office who had a lot more power and position than me and simply said I find you amazing and you're really good at this can I just ask you some questions because I admire you and that was how I had to learn I learned it that way and slowly slowly but very very hard worked my way up to to a career and a solid reputation and so forth now I'm blessed that I work with people who they don't see that I have a career don't have a career they just see my expertise but I had to work very very hard for that and so I I always tell my boys college you know I know it's not for everyone but it does open some doors it does so mine has to do with men I come from a large Polish Catholic family from the Appalachia southwestern Pennsylvania and I've never married went to college I was the first to move out of the zip code so that was a big deal and when I would go home I have five five that many other cousins who are the exact same age as I was all married like all within one year and I'd go home for a family reunion and they'd be like when are you getting married when are you getting married I mean because you're not complete until you're married and that kind of eroded myself confidence every time I heard that it said to me something wrong with you something wrong with you and the reality is I have a bad picker I pick the wrong guys okay it's not that I'm not lovable I just have a bad picker so I'm going to outsource I'm going to lethap pick them for me but anyway my biggest regret is that I spent probably two decades of my life desperate to get married and I missed so much because my focus was on that now granted ladies we got a challenge because our hormones drive a lot of that it's true we have a biological clock that makes us want to have children and do all of that kind of stuff it was an uphill battle for me and and looking back on it now I'm exactly where God wants me to be and I was supposed to go through that journey so today I can sit before a group of young beautiful women like you and say let it go I mean if you've got a bad picker like I did doesn't mean you're not lovable you just got a bad picker accept it move on and and make sure that you're listening to the right messages you had a question about that how do you deal with those pressures of family and everybody when are you getting married when are you going to have a kid la la I don't know for me I had to wait until I got old enough that I could look back on it and say how insane was that that I wasted all those years wanting and thinking believing the lie that I wasn't whole unless I had somebody else in my life you know I wanted I want to tell you that the first my first marriage I picked and I was wrong and and my second one which is almost 30 years ago my best friend picked and good for you I highly recommend your pick I think I would have her pick your guy I actually was raised in a family where the girl gets married as children and the husband takes care of and so I got married not even really knowing what it was to have a marriage and a relationship and then I had two children and then I got divorced and I'm a single mom with no high I graduated high school but no education and raised two children on my own I never remarried but I did date and but I took care of my kids I learned the responsibility of taking care of kids and building a career because if you look at me now a lot of people don't know that I'm more introverted than extroverted but through a lot of self-discovery I've learned what I bring to the table and how to use that to raise a family make the money I need to do and I have two daughters who are married I have three grandchildren they take care of themselves so that's an accomplishment to me but I can tell you I didn't know what I was doing and to get married just because that's what everybody's telling you is the wrong choice you have to live your life we each have unique skills abilities talents if every single one of us on the earth was exactly alive then one of us would be essential and the rest of us would be a waste I mean it's really the truth be yourself and I know that that's what girls eat talks and teaches you guys about there could be no more truth than that that is really it live your life don't worry about somebody else's expectations for your life only you know the best path listen to your heart listen to your instinct let them guide you because you will get high roads low roads that you will get there and it's the journey ask ask any of us if we're done and the answer is no no we're far from done I will add you know I did some research on on the topic when I was asked to do this and I went to YouTube and looked at the videos and the one thing that just really kept bothering me was you know the girls were always saying I didn't like my hands my legs my eyes but I wanted to ask them what do you like what what do you like about yourself why is it always what you don't like what do you like have you ever looked into me and say wow I really like that or wow I really like that you know I have gray hair a lot of people look at that as oh my god you're old you're over the hill all this other stuff and my mother had the worst problem with it and I did but it identifies me it's your brain there's nobody else like me and I challenge each of you women in the audience to go home tonight and tell your parents what's good about you not what's bad but what's good final question what is the best advice you receive when you are our age okay oh mama's talking all those same things we're giving you now that we didn't listen to you know it is a combination answer um for me from um with your other one the biggest mistake you made because I I used to joke and and it was it was a big mistake to joke about it that my dad wanted a boy because he had me help him um when he rebuilt the engine in the car and he had me help him when he reads the brakes on the car and he had me um actually asked me to sew um a jib sail for his um his sailboat and I did and and he took me hunting and he did all these things and when I finally decided okay I want a car he handed me a car that needed its engine rebuild and said when you rebuild the engine you can drive the car and and I said yeah you you always learned a boy first right and he didn't get it until my little brother and he said no I wanted you to be able to figure it out I wanted you to be able to do it yourself and he said you can and that's the advice that he gave me he gave me all of my life you can do it you can figure it out mine actually came from my mother and she said in the gazillion times that was enjoy today and stop trying to grow up so fast because the only thing that happens is you keep thinking in your mind okay when I'm at that next point when I'm here and I can do these things oh life's going to be so much better well yeah you might be able to do those things but what you don't realize at that moment is all the other things that come with that point in your life like when you grow up and it's like okay so yes we we do make money and we can take vacations oh but we also pay all the bills and we have to do all the chores and make sure there's groceries and kids are at school on time she always said just enjoy this because this is only here for a moment and when you get to that you can enjoy that because you'll be ready for that but stop trying to grow up so fast my the best advice I got was from my favorite teacher in high school Mrs. Jean Bash taught at dairy dairy high school my graduating class was 365 people biggest class ever that graduated out of that high school in any event Mrs. Bash for my graduation gave me a book of impressionistic painting and on the inside cover what she transcribed to me was get out and experience the world and that was such a gift in so many ways because it came from Mrs. Bash and then also because what she stood for in my life I would say from where I sit today the best advice I can give you is choose who you walk this journey with carefully because I have got girlfriends that surround me in my life now that without them there are days where I couldn't get out of bed and these are girlfriends that love me enough to tell me the truth who are willing to go above and beyond we've seen each other without makeup sometimes without the correct undergarments as well but we do what we need to do to help each other so be real selective about who you do take this journey with I love Maria's got people she's been with since middle school I don't have that that kind of luxury but I do have friends that have walked this journey with me so far and I'm going to keep them close I think I would challenge you to have these same questions ask the same questions of your mom and dad and ask them to be honest with you because when I was raising my two daughters I expressed a lot of things I went through when they were experiencing it so that it wasn't me just telling them they they could understand why was saying what I was saying so I think if you open up to your mom and dad and you ask them these same kinds of questions and ask them to be honest with you and and parents I would suggest you open up to your children because that's when the real reality comes together and you have the relationship that you need and you get the answers you need any questions from the audience at this time my dad used to have a saying that he would I think my dad used to have a saying that he was notorious for telling me and that is that the perfect is the enemy of the great and done is better than perfect because you spend a lot of time focusing on what you need to do what you should be doing how it should be done when done and being proud of what you've accomplished is what's most important I think you've heard that message from these women stated a lot more uh approachably thank you all very much for being here tonight and thank all of you for being here is there if you have one final closing comment today what would it be find out find out how you're doing and oh believe in something bigger than yourself that in trouble for being too kind I was going to be similar love cannot feel a thousand wounds so go love the world and love yourself thank you all very much have a great evening yes you did a great job