Medicine has long been about the most ambitious profession any young person may consider. The acceptance rate into traditional U.S. medical schools is low: fewer than half of all applicants get in. As many as 1 in 6 who do will not graduate. Those who do then have residencies and further training that take longer than their formal schooling, and student loan debt surpassing $200,000. But for women, one big challenge that’s changed from Marie Hoffman’s time at Wake Forest – today, more women than men attend traditional medical schools.

In the mid-1950s, Marie Hoffman left medical school after two years to begin a family. Later, she earned an advanced degree in Clinical Psychology from the Florida Institute of Technology but again chose to forego professional practice when her husband became terminally ill. “Family came first,” she says.

For Dr. Johnson, motherhood may have meant choosing a different field of practice, but not whether to be a doctor at all. The two recently compared stories inside Dr. Johnson’s Cocoa Beach Health First office. Both are mothers (of six and three children, respectively) who, this Mother’s Day, will remember proudly the mothers they have known.

“On Mother’s Day, I celebrate the women who came before, and I think about how we can keep that going to the next generation.”

READ and WATCH the feature on Space Coast Daily here.