" citizenry could n’t even fathom that I was making a choice for myself . "
Michelle Obama discussed divorce rumors and her step back from the public eye.
The former first lady skipped both Jimmy Carter’s funeral and Donald Trump’s inauguration earlier this year. Ascheduling conflictwas cited for the former while reportssuggestedshe did not want to “plaster on a pleasant face and pretend for protocol’s sake” for the inauguration.
These added to divorce speculation, which was already well underway due to afalserumor that Barack was secretly hooking up with Jennifer Anniston (he wasn’t). This isdespiteboth Michelle and Barack posting loving public messages to one another forValentine’s Dayand Michelle’s birthday.
In a new episode of thepodcastWork in ProgresswithSophia Bush, Michelle was asked what her “social life” looks like nowadays. “It is whatever I want,” she replied. “It’s the first time in my life all of my choices are for me.”
“But it’s also a little scary. Because as a mom and a busy person, it was always somebody else’s excuse — Why didn’t I do this? Why haven’t I gone there? Well, I have to make sure the girls are okay, or my husband’s president, so I can’t do that,” she continued.
“Now, I can’t blame my decisions and indecisions on anyone other than me,” she continued. “As a woman, I think if I’m honest with myself, I could have made a lot of these decisions years ago. But I didn’t give myself that freedom. Maybe, even as much as I let my kids lead their own lives, I used their lives as an excuse for why I couldn’t do something. And now that’s wrong.”
Michelle said that she looked at her calendar and in the case of a “real big example,” chose not to do something she was “supposed” to. “I chose to do what was best for me. Not what I had to do, not what I thought other people wanted me to do. And between you and me, it was an important test for me as a woman, as an independent person. Because like all women and a lot of people, I operate from guilt,” she continued. “What should I do? What is the best thing for everybody else?”
“But the interesting thing is that when I say no, for the most part, people are like, ‘I get it.’ That’s the thing that we as women struggle with: disappointing people. So much so that this year, people couldn’t even fathom that I was making a choice for myself. They had to assume that my husband and I are divorcing,” she explained. “This couldn’t be a grown woman just making a set of decisions herself, right? But that’s what society does to us.”
You can listen to the full interviewhere.
