The former first lady got candid about living life on her own terms and not continually “going high” in the latest episode of her podcast, ‘IMO’
Michelle Obama is finally opening up about her decision to step back from certain public events.
The former first lady raised eyebrows when she did not attend the second inauguration of President Donald Trump in January. The move came shortly after she missed Jimmy Carter’s funeral, where she would have been seated beside Trump.
Though her absence from the spotlight after the new year sparked rumors of bitterness, scandal and even marital discord between her and former President Barack Obama, she now says it was simply “the choice that was right for me.”
In the April 23 episode of her podcast, IMO With Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson — which she co-hosts with her brother — Obama and guest Taraji P. Henson get candid about living life in the spotlight and the criticisms they face as Black women.
“People couldn’t believe that I was saying no for any other reason, they had to assume that my marriage was falling apart,” Obama said of the headlines surrounding the inauguration and her husband’s solo outings. “It took everything in my power to not do the thing that was perceived as right, but do the things that was right for me, that was a hard thing for me to do.”
The author and activist said she had to “basically trick” herself into following through on her desire to skip the inauguration — by ensuring that she would have nothing to wear if she started feeling the pressure to attend.
“It started with not having anything to wear,” Obama said of the moment she finalized her decision. “I was like, if I’m not going to do this thing, I got to tell my team, I don’t even want to have a dress ready, right? Because it’s so easy to just say let me do the right thing.”
If her team didn’t prepare a dress for her, she knew she wouldn’t be able to change her mind.
Attending events without her husband, or vice versa, all tie into Obama’s efforts to practice the “art of saying no” when it feels like the right decision.
“It’s a muscle that you have to build,” she explained of her philosophy. “And I think we suffered, because it’s almost like we started training late in life to build that muscle, right? I am just now starting to build it.”
“I want our daughters, I want the young women out there… I want my girls to start practicing different strategies for saying no,” she continued. “After all that I’ve done in this world, if I am still showing them that I have to keep- I still have to show people that I love my country, that I’m doing the right thing, that I am always setting, going high all the time, even in the face of a lot of hypocrisy and contradiction, all I’m doing is keeping that crazy bar that our mothers and grandmothers set for us.”
In the years since she and her family left the White House in 2017, Obama said she’s been digging deep in therapy to find out how the experience affected her.
“We made it through. We got out alive,” she shared. “I hope we made the country proud. My girls, thank God, are whole. But what happened to me?”
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“Going through therapy is getting me to look at the fact that maybe, maybe finally I’m good enough,” she added.
Henson agreed, saying that, oftentimes, women become “shock absorbers” for the people in their lives and take on more than they should.
“You’ve had to be a shock absorber for your husband, for your children, for your mom, for family, your loved ones, because of where you were sitting in the public eye. That’s not fair to you,” the actress noted. “I applaud you. I’m happy that you are taking care of yourself in the way that you need to.”
It’s not been an easy path for Obama, who faced a heightened level of criticism during her time in the White House as the first — and, to date, only — Black first lady. Both she and Henson attest to the fact that, as Black women, they’re used to being labeled as “angry” or “bitter” at the drop of a hat.
“Some of the most hurtful stuff that I experienced entering this life of public service at the heights that we entered into was during my husband’s presidential campaign [was] just me telling the truth of who we were, you know, just humanizing him as a man,” she recalled.
“[I’m] saying, ‘He’s a great man, but he’s not perfect, you know? He’s got his foibles and his flaws,’ ” Obama continued. “The first thing that some female journalist said is that I was bitter. I was emasculating him just by sort of trying to tell the truth about what life is, right?”
“And then you get labeled as angry, you know, because you talk forcefully or passionately about something, even if it’s in the context of great joy and pride, that the first label they put on us as black women is that we are angry.”
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