Former US First Lady Michelle Obama and former US President Barack Obama, who have been together for a little over 32 years, were recently at the centre of divorce rumours, which Michelle has now addressed in a podcast. She said she decided to step back from the spotlight and take time for herself. That was apparently why she was absent from several events her husband attended, including President Trump’s inauguration and President Jimmy Carter’s funeral in January, which initially sparked the rumours.
On actor Sophia Bush’s podcast “Work in Progress”, Michelle explained that her absence wasn’t due to marital issues but rather a personal decision to take a step back and focus on herself. She said that after spending eight years at the White House with two grown-ups, she now has the opportunity to have control over her calendar. She added that the decisions she is making now could have been made years ago, but she had restricted herself from doing so.
“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 on the podcast.
She continued, “And now that’s gone. And so now I have to look at my – I get to look at my calendar, which I did this year, was a real big example of me, myself looking at something that I was supposed to do – you know, without naming names – and 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.”
‘Saying no gave birth to divorce rumours’
Michelle said that it is difficult for a woman to say no without being misunderstood: “The interesting thing is that when I say ‘no’, for the most part, people are like, ‘I get it’, and ‘I’m ok’. And that’s the thing that we as women struggle with – disappointing people. So much so that people couldn’t even fathom that I was making a choice for myself, that they had to assume that my husband and I are divorcing.”
“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. We, you know, the library is opening in a year from now. Certain things I am and am not doing with the library,” Michelle said.
‘I chose what was best for me’
Laughing off divorce rumours, Michelle said that she is just “a grown woman making a set of decisions for herself” and “owning them fully”.
Now that her daughters are grown, Michelle said she’s embracing this chapter of her life with new clarity. She said that she started asking herself, “Who do I truly want to be every day? Who do I want to have lunch with? How long do I want to stay in a place? Do I want to travel? If a girlfriend calls and says, ‘Let’s go here…,’ I can say ‘yes’. And I’m trying to do that more and more.”
“But that’s what society does to us. We actually finally start going, ‘What am I doing? Who am I doing this for?’ And if it doesn’t fit into the sort of stereotype of what people think we should do, then it gets labelled as something negative and horrible,” she added.
Michelle’s comments come just days after Barack Obama acknowledged challenges in their relationship, saying he was “in a deep deficit” with her. “I have been trying to dig myself out of that hole by doing occasionally fun things,” he said.
Michelle, in her book “Becoming”, opened up about how Barack’s political career and his time in office had put a strain on their marriage, often leaving her feeling lonely and exhausted.
The 61-year-old and her brother Craig Robinson recently launched their own podcast, “IMO with Michelle Obama & Craig Robinson”, which premiered on March 11. The show explores “life’s biggest questions” and aims to create a sense of connection and comfort through heartfelt conversations with a variety of guests.