Former first lady Michelle Obama, 61, left the White House eight years ago. While that period of time was pivotal, she says she is ready to take control of her own choices and her calendar.
“I could have made a lot of these decisions years ago but I didn’t give myself that freedom,” Obama said on actress Sophia Bush’s podcast, “Work in Progress.”
“Maybe even as much as I let my kids live their own lives, I use their lives as an excuse for why I couldn’t do something,” she said. The first family’s daughters, Malia and Sasha were teenagers when the Obamas exited the White House.
The former first lady is making adjustments to her own life now that her two girls are in their 20s. Malia made her directorial debut with a short film called “The Heart” at the Sundance Film Festival last year, and Sasha recently graduated from the University of Southern California.
Michelle Obama, the author of three books and founder of production company Higher Ground, said she looked at her calendar this year. “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,” she said.
This year, Michelle Obama was notably absent from President Donald Trump’s inauguration and the state funeral of former President Jimmy Carter.
What did Michelle Obama say about divorce rumors?
She addressed the divorce rumors and her thought process behind committing to engagements.
“I still find time to you know, give speeches, to be out there in the world, to work on projects. I still care about girls’ education,” she said. Obama added she’s involved in some projects related to the Barack Obama Presidential Library, which is under construction in Chicago.
“That’s the thing that we as women, I think we struggle with like disappointing people. I mean so much so that this year people were, you know — they couldn’t even fathom that I was making a choice for myself that they had to assume that my husband and I are divorcing," she said.
“If it doesn’t fit into the sort of stereotype of what people think we should do, then it gets labeled as something negative and horrible.”
In a new episode of her own recently launched podcast “IMO” (an abbreviation of “In My Opinion”) with her brother Craig Robinson, Obama opened up about her personal life with the former president.
“Marriage is work,” she told the show guest Elaine Welteroth, an author and entrepreneur. “This is a hard thing to do — melding two lives together.”