Richmond Times-Dispatch

     Jenna Bush Hager said she finished her makeup Thursday morning almost as her plane touched down on the runway at Richmond International Airport, that she put on the electric blue dress she was wearing in a bathroom at the airport, and that her hair wasn’t perfect but “it is what it is.”

     The audience at St. Catherine’s School — nearly all women and some students — offered a collective yet knowing laugh, the sort of chuckle that comes from the shared experiences of being women and mothers and working professionals who run households and businesses and nonprofits and never, it seems, have enough time to do what needs to be done.

It’s that strength of women everywhere, Hager would later go on to say, that should be celebrated and honored — especially in bronze.

     Hager — daughter of former President George W. Bush and first lady Laura Bush — and a wife and mother to two young girls, made a special appearance at St. Catherine’s as a show of support for the Virginia Women’s Monument, a monument planned for Capitol Square that would celebrate 12 influential Virginia women with life-sized bronze statues. The monument — called Voices from the Garden — would feature an interactive garden plaza where patrons could learn about lives of the chosen women, who represent four centuries of Virginia history. Another 200 to 300 names of prominent women will be listed on a glass panel within the monument.

     The monument was approved in 2010 with a price tag of more than $3 million. The Virginia Women’s Monument Commission, also established in 2010, chose the 12 individuals in 2013 and has been fundraising ever since. Funding comes from donations made to the Virginia Capitol Foundation.

     Before Hager took the stage, Colleen Messick, executive director of the Virginia Capitol Foundation, told the audience that nationally, less than 8 percent of the public statues erected across the country are of women. She said in New York’s Central Park, for example, “the only women portrayed in statuary are Alice in Wonderland, Shakespeare’s Juliet — and Mother Goose.”

     “We can do better than that, gals,” Messick said, adding that the foundation is “steadfast” in its efforts to see the monument completed because “our daughters, our granddaughters, nieces and students, need inspiration to have aspirations.”

One of the chosen women is Adele Goodman Clark, an alumni of the Virginia Randolph Ellett School — now St. Catherine’s — who founded the Equal Suffrage League of Virginia and later went on to be instrumental in opening the Richmond Academy of Arts in 1930, today’s Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.

     Hager engaged in a question-and-answer session led by Kay Coles James, who served in the administrations of Hager’s father and her grandfather, former President George H.W. Bush, and is president and founder of the Gloucester Institute, a leadership training academy for young African-Americans.

     From prepared questions, Hager talked about her life with two small children, how she juggles her family and careers as both a correspondent for NBC’s “Today” show and an editor-at-large for Southern Living magazine, and how she relies on people such as her twin sister, Barbara, her mother and her grandmother, former first lady Barbara Bush, for support.

Hager said many women find themselves striving to reach a “work-life balance,” yet that balance is really “a spectrum and it means something different for every other person.”

     “There are moments when I feel like I’m going to explode,” she said, and “every woman feels that way.”

     But Hager said she’s personally working on letting go of the things that aren’t important, and instead focusing on the important things in life. She said women should surround themselves with other women who lift them up, and continue to use their collective power to be advocates for and act as strong role models for young girls.

     “That’s one of the reasons why I’m so thrilled about what the (Virginia Women’s Monument Committee) is doing,” she said. “Women are so capable — we just do what we need to do.”