Michelle Obama has finally opened up about why she didn’t attend Trump’s inauguration in January with Barack Obama. She also addressed the circulating rumors that she and Barack have separated.
She spoke about it on her podcast
The former first lady spoke about her decision to step back from the spotlight on her podcast IMO With Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson.
This comes after she missed Trump’s second inauguration and Jimmy Carter’s funeral where she would have been seated next to the president.
Obama got candid with her guest
In the podcast episode, Obama got candid with her guest Taraji P. Henson about life in the spotlight as a Black woman.
Obama said that her stepping out of the spotlight caused a lot of bitterness from the public and resulted in rumors surrounding problems in her marriage with the former president.
She said stepping back was right for her
Explaining why she stepped out of the public eye, Obama simply said it was “the choice that was right for me.”
“People couldn’t believe that I was saying no for any other reason, they had to assume that my marriage was falling apart,” she said.
Obama said she struggled with doing what she wanted
“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,” she said of the reaction to her skipping Trump’s inauguration.
She said she had to ‘trick herself’ into doing it
The activist said she had to “basically trick” herself into following up on her decision to skip Donald Trump’s inauguration in January.
She did that by ensuring she would have nothing to wear to the event in case she somehow felt like giving in to the pressure of going.
Obama explained her decision further
“It started with not having anything to wear,” she said while explaining how 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.”
She’s trying to ‘learn to say no’
“It’s a muscle that you have to build,” Obama said of learning the “art of saying no” when it comes to skipping out on big events.
“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.”
Obama spoke about encouraging young women
The former first lady has had to work through life in the spotlight, learning to set boundaries, and having to deal with the rumors about her relationship with Barack Obama as she skips out on events he attends. She also mentioned setting an example for her daughters.
“I want our daughters, I want the young women out there… I want my girls to start practicing different strategies for saying no,” she added.
She highlighted being a role model for her daughters
“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,” Obama said.
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Therapy helped her handle the spotlight
“We made it through. We got out alive,” Obama shared of life after the White House. “I hope we made the country proud. My girls, thank God, are whole. But what happened to me?” she added.
“Going through therapy is getting me to look at the fact that maybe, maybe finally I’m good enough.”