Michelle Obama, the former first lady, has discussed why she chose not to attend President Donald Trump’s second inauguration earlier this year.
Obama spoke out on the April 23 episode of her podcast, IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson, which she co-hosts with her brother. She was also conspicuously absent from the funeral of former President Jimmy Carter on January 9.
She talked candidly about the very personal factors that led to her choice in an interview with actress Taraji P. Henson.
She claimed that she received a lot of mockery and criticism for her choice to skip the inauguration, which many people are unaware of, and for choosing to make decisions at the start of the year that worked for her.
“People found it hard to accept that I was refusing for any other reason. They must have thought my marriage was failing,” she added.
“While I’m here, I’m genuinely attempting to take charge of my life and deliberately practice making the best decision for me.”
She clarified that the choice was a part of a larger commitment to respecting her own needs, even if doing so went against what the general public thought.
It required all of my strength to act in my own best interests rather than what was deemed to be proper. “It was difficult for me to do that,” Obama continued.
The former First Lady stated that she had to consciously eliminate any temptation to reconsider her decision in order to be committed to it.
She revealed, “It began with having nothing to wear.” “I mean, I said in the yes because I am always ready for any kind of funeral. I travel with clothing in case something breaks, and I always wear the appropriate dress. I therefore thought, “I have to tell my team that I don’t even want to have a dress ready if I am not going to do this thing.”
“Because it’s so easy to just say, ‘Let me do the right thing,’” Michelle Obama added.
In addition to protecting her personal peace, Obama said she also wanted to set an example for her daughters — Malia, 26, and Sasha, 23 — about the importance of boundaries and self-prioritisation.
“I want them to start practising now the art of saying ‘no’,” she said.
“Because I see it in them — pleasing, excelling, not wanting to take anything for granted, always showing gratitude, feeling like they’re enough right now, right? It’s a practice. It’s a muscle that you have to build, because if you don’t constantly build it, you don’t develop it.”
The former First Lady had spoken about this evolving mindset earlier in April during an appearance on the Work in Progress podcast with Sophia Bush. There, she highlighted the societal pressures women face when they put themselves first.
“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 were divorcing,” she said.
“This couldn’t be a grown woman just making a set of decisions for herself, right? But that’s what society does to us. We start actually finally going, ‘What am I doing? Who am I doing this for?’” she continued.
“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 concluded with a powerful statement on self-determination:
“I feel like it’s time for me to make some big-girl decisions about my life and own it fully.”
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