First lady Michelle Obama wants women veterans to talk about themselves more.

“(Your stories) are so worth telling, and our girls, our granddaughters need to hear them,” she told a packed Statuary Hall during a Women’s History Month event at the Capitol on Wednesday. “If you are a woman veteran, if you have worn the uniform and served bravely, I want to ask you to stand tall.”

The comments came as both an admonition and admiration for the roughly 3 million women veterans in America today, one of the fastest growing segments of the military population. Speakers at the event called their experiences inspiring but too often unheralded, or simply dismissed as common knowledge.

Congressional leaders and veterans advocates attended the event to honor retired Brig. Gen. Wilma Vaught, one of the first women to serve as a general officer in the military and a driving force behind the Women’s Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery.

Read More- Military Times

Image courtesy of AP