By Shanderia K. Posey
Editor
More than 100 women from all walks of life were rejuvenated after attending the What IF Women’s Health and Empowerment Conference at 6 p.m. Aug. 12, at the Mississippi e-Center at Jackson State University.
The gathering was the second annual Stilettos on the Pavement conference presented by Another Family Gathering. The purpose of the conference was to challenge the status quo that women cannot work together and to empower and educate women on being healthy.
Stilettos on the Pavement is described as an experience allowing professional and business women to network.
For younger women, age 18-25, Flats on the Pavement offers a way to build and maintain business relationships, become entrepreneurs and support each other through challenges specific to their age group. Events are held throughout the year.
Stilettos on the Pavement founder, Tameka Garrett, kicked off the conference with a skit where she walked around the room showing women the freedom and power of taking off their layers – literally and figuratively.
“My point to you is to begin to take these layers off. I, Tameka, am not always comfortable with who I am … I have to be free to be me … I have to be able to say ‘I’m here,’” Garrett said.
She encouraged the women to treat other women the same regardless of whether they don sweat pants or are dressed to the nines.
“We all have things that we are striving and trying and crawling and praying to get through,” she said. “In Stilettos, there is no judgment, but there is taking off layers. This is a safe haven for people who are ready to be supportive.”
Speakers for the conference touched on a variety of topics including physical and mental abuse, child molestation, mental health, faith and stress.
Latasha McGill, 39, of the Tasha Mac Chronicles, shared her story of overcoming being a young mother in an abusive marriage as well as shifting the course of her life after leaving New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina.
McGill had her first child at 17 and by the age of 25, she had four daughters. Despite some parenting experts’ suggestions that parents shouldn’t be friends with their children, McGill claims her daughters as her best friends. When she comes home to them at the end of the work day, she can hardly put down her purse before they are hugging her.
The journey hasn’t been total bliss, though. She endured judgmental, hopeless questions and statements along the way on why was she having another child, how was she going to raise them and go to school, etc. Some offered to help but with conditions of not being inconvenienced themselves.
“See people will do those things and tell you those things to try and stop you from walking in your power and in your purpose,” McGill said.
Before her youngest daughter turned 1, McGill and her daughters moved into a homeless shelter in New Orleans in December 2002. The move was prompted after McGill was attacked by her husband at the time.
In a tiny room of the shelter with her daughters McGill recalled just sitting and crying saying, “God I can’t believe this is my life … but at the same time I still had my strength in God.”
They continued going to church every Sunday. Eventually, she saved money, moved, got a divorce and went to college. Then Hurricane Katrina hit.
McGill and her girls came to Jackson and stayed with an aunt and great things began to take place in her life, including graduating from college. She summed up her message by telling all women to not let anything stop them from accomplishing what God has for them.
“When you walk into your power and walk into your purpose, bring someone else along with you,” McGill said.
Dr. Nanetta Payne of Payne Behavioral Health shared the importance of mental well-being. Before speaking, she strutted throughout the room as Erykah Badu’s “Bag Lady” song played. Several attendees sang along.
Payne presented the analogy that women carry a lot of emotional bags.
“The question is not whether we are carrying bags … the question is how many, how large … what goodies and secrets lurk inside those bags,” Payne said. “Because if we are honest with ourselves, ladies, we have stuff inside these bags that we don’t want anyone to know about.”
The bags represent our consciousness, Payne said, and they contain such things as shame, pain, regrets and myriad fears of failure, success, responsibility, abandonment, rejection and getting old.
One way to deal with “their bags” is to do self-assessment, according to Payne.
“When was the last time mentally you stopped and cleaned up some stuff,” said Payne, who recommended developing a routine of checking in mentally.
In her message to attendees, Redmond shared points of enduring life’s unexpected storms. She also reminded the women how special they were, how God carefully crafted them and how she was trusting God through a recent family issue.
Her solution was prayer, activating your faith and turning the situation over to God.
“When your sister calls you, just pray, and you don’t have to know the details,” Redmond said. “That thing is so deep that you don’t have a choice but to put it in God’s hands.”
For more information on Stilettos on the Pavement, visit http://www.stilettosonthepavement.com.
Shanderia K. Posey can be reached at sposey@mississippilink.com.
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