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SARAH CAVACINI/Palatka Daily News – Professional women and girls from Putnam County high schools talk during Girls Can about the women’s experiences and where the girls see themselves in the future.
Putnam County girls learned Friday not to stop believing in themselves or let anything hold them back.
Teenage girls from each Putnam high school spent International Women’s Day learning their worth and how they can do anything they put their minds to during Girls Can, which involves successful women empowering the women of tomorrow.
More than 80 community members and businesswomen spoke during the event at the C.L. Overturf Jr. District Center in Palatka.
Girls Can was founded in 2017 and was meant to be an annual occurrence, but event organizers stopped hosting it in 2021 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Friday was the first time since the shutdown that Girls Can took place in Putnam County.
Keynote speakers included Barbara L. Brown, the director of exploration research and technology programs at NASA, and Judge Angela Cox, who serves the 4th Judicial Circuit Court of Florida.
“You are enough,” Cox told the group of teenagers and career women.
Cox said she grew up in a “drug-infested” Michigan neighborhood and was raised by her grandmother. The 18-year Florida judge got C’s and D’s in high school, was suspended and got into fights.
As a teenager, Cox said, she felt like life was unfair and she had a terrible attitude. Cox’s mother was addicted to drugs, and her brother died at a young age.
However, Cox fought through the statistics that surrounded her, like the probability she would become a teenage mother as her own mom had or that she would be dead or in jail at a young age.
“We all have certain things we want to improve,” she said. “We should want to improve. There were certainly things I needed to improve, starting with my bad attitude. Even with that, I was enough. I cared about myself enough to know that if I wanted a life that I could be proud of, there was work that needed to be done.”
Cox told the crowd to stop comparing themselves to other people, remember to invest in themselves and think carefully about where they want to go in life.
She even invited her daughter, Morgan, 15, to speak with her Friday. Her daughter has a condition where her body does not produce pigment in her hair, skin or eyes.
Cox said the condition has left Morgan visually impaired, but it’s taught her daughter to be resilient.
She advised the young girls to change the way they see failure, stop basing their worth in comparison to other people’s accomplishments on social media and believe in themselves when no one else does.
“When I start thinking the negative thoughts about myself, I stop myself and remind myself of all the positives, that I am enough,” Morgan said.
The teenagers also gathered in breakout groups with special guests who brought knowledge from teaching, health care, publishing, law enforcement, agriculture, entrepreneurship and other career fields.
Most groups involved six professionals talking to up to six high schoolers. One group discussed what career paths students wanted to pursue, while the professions shared how they wound up in their current fields.
Putnam County Judge Anne Marie Gennusa told them not everyone has to pursue a traditional four-year college.
Although she went to college and law school, she said it’s not all about grades. People need to be well-rounded and find their strong suit, whatever that may be.
“I think all these ladies will tell you, ‘Be true to you,’” she said. “Just because you have a college education, it doesn’t buy you class. It doesn’t make you a good person, and it doesn’t make you better than anybody else.”
The forum closed with Brown, a Palatka native, inspiring women to reach for their dreams. When she was younger, her parents told her she couldn’t say the word “can’t” because she and her siblings could do whatever they put their minds to as long as they kept thinking.
She grew up with an interest in space, starting with watching “Star Trek” and later setting her sights on a less fictitious setting, having told her mother NASA needed her.
She now works for the Kennedy Space Center, leading the team of people at NASA who conduct research and prepare astronauts’ trips to the International Space Station. They manage a project where crops are sent into space, Brown said.
Brown warned the young ladies about people who may try to squash their dreams or steer them in different directions. She cautioned everyone to not let other people limit them.
“My mom turned it this way. She said, ‘When people believe you can’t succeed, don’t give them the satisfaction of failing. Prove to them that, yes, I can,’” Brown said. “My entire life, I was always hearing that. Positive brainwashing, I call it. Yes, you can.”
