Dipping Into Michelle Obama’s Toolkit

I’ve always been curious about how the Obamas tided over the Trump years when many of their attempts to change the social and political landscape were overturned. The Light We Carry offers some glimpses. More particularly about the manner in which Michelle handled these reversals. One gets a sense too, that Barack possesses a remarkably buoyant temperament, a capacity to stay relatively unfazed by setbacks.

For exactly that reason, perhaps, Michelle has gathered a zealous coterie of readers and social media fans: she’s more relatable, admitting to ups and downs and quiet fits of rage or anguish, devising a set of tools that even the “ordinaries” can access. (After all, post their White House sojourn, Barack and Michelle belong to an eclectic set – folks who can summon celebrities or A-listers to birthdays and housewarmings – and who despite not holding any formal political office anymore, wield significant cultural influence.)

The Light We Carry is unabashedly self-help. But it’s not agonizingly didactic. It’s more like slipping into your pajamas and sinking into a couch with a favorite middle-aged friend, sharing some bits of yourself, receiving bits of her while sensing all along that you get each other.

She worries, no doubt, like any parent would, about her daughters. During the pandemic, she also needed to check in on her Mom, who’s back to living at Euclid – their tight squeeze of an apartment on the South Side of Chicago – after the surreal eight-year whirl at D.C. (For those who haven’t read Becoming, Michelle’s Mom, Ms. Robinson, lived with the Obamas at the White House, to keep a grandmotherly eye on Sasha and Malia).

Having inhabited elite academic spaces as a feisty, first-generation learner before she met Obama – Princeton for her Bachelor’s, Harvard for her J.D. – Michelle was already imbued with larger ambitions. Which might have been whetted by her stints in corporate law and in the Chicago city government. Before being catapulted into the ambivalent tumult of a First Lady.

Naturally, then, she doesn’t only worry about her daughters. She also cares about larger planetary issues. Such concern, she realizes swiftly, can fizzle into futility unless harnessed into concrete action. In her case, she turns her angst into writing – Becoming, which was like her first unpeeling of a carefully donned mask, and now The Light We Carry, an honest reckoning of what’s really worked for her, during good times and bad. Here are some pointers for those who’d like to engage in a fireside chat with a global icon:

Laugh Despite Tough Times

Michelle was to glean a childhood lesson from her father’s multiple sclerosis: “We were learning that life was not in our control.” Mr. Robinson had started using a cane for support and there were times when even the walking stick gave way, and he just tumbled to the floor. Yet their family blinded themselves to impending calamities – her father, after all, was their sole breadwinner and a strong emotional pillar for all – and laughed through various situations: “In our home, laughter was yet another well-worked tool.”

Celebrate Difference

The bigger lesson that her family absorbed from her father’s condition was learning to contend with difference. “Being different conditions you toward cautiousness, even as it demands that you be bold.”

Share Vulnerabilities

Even after her confidence-boosting stint as First Lady, Michelle admits to feeling nervy when her first book, Becoming, was to launch. Her book tour across 31 cities had already been plotted; audiences around the world were poised to encounter her first-person stories sans the claptrap that surrounds the White House. The night before, she confronted a question that might be strikingly familiar to many, though some might be hard put to admit it: “Am I good enough?”

The Becoming tour would end up being one of the most “affirming periods” in her life. Her staged talks drew tens of thousands to big and small venues – auditoriums, churches, bookstores, and community centers. In all these spaces, readers shared their life stories and hopes and fears, realizing in the process, how much they all had in common.

Knit or Focus on the Small

During the pandemic, among other things, she ordered knitting needles. All her life, she had been accustomed to being intensely busy. As a professional, parent, and government official, she had filled her days with meetings, activities, and to-dos. Even as she had to acknowledge her own privilege – when nurses, doctors, and other emergency workers had no reprieve – she also had to find imaginative ways to fill her time. “I was never one for hobbies,” she admits.

She came from a family in which women knew how to sew. As a means to support themselves, even. Her great-grandmother had to lug a Singer machine to summer vacations, where she would fix the clothes of a holidaying white family. While Michelle wasn’t raised to darn her own socks but to hit her books, she now had a rethink. How could she turn her thoughts away from the nation’s disastrous handling of the pandemic and many other offshoots of the Trump takeover?

She started knitting, learning from impassioned YouTubers. “We knit and purled, purled and knit. And after a time, something interesting started to happen. My focus narrowed; my mind felt a splash of ease.”

Undo the Stuffiness

Michelle and Barack often invited children into the White House to break the stuffiness of the place. At one point, all the staff’s kids were invited, and the children had a session with Michelle, where they were allowed to ask her questions. “What’s your favorite food?”, “Is the President nice?” When she hugged one kid, all the kids wanted a hug. It was a relief for Obama, after dealing with crafty diplomats or calculative state leaders, to give in to simpler requests.

Forge a ‘Kitchen Table’

Even after going to the White House, Michelle continued to cherish certain relationships from the past. Some were women she had met while carpooling kids, another she had bumped into at a salon. Some were Princeton classmates, others were workplace friends. These were women that she could relate with, women who had known her in different contexts and before she had inhabited the corridors of power. She occasionally organized retreats with them, so they could catch up on each other’s lives, and also refuel themselves. “My real friends know what I look like without makeup on, and in bad lighting, and at unflattering angles.”

Focus on Fitness

For one of the friends’ get-togethers, Michelle, as a fitness enthusiast, suggested that the retreat involve three sweaty workouts, no alcohol, no meat, and no junk food. Naturally, the ‘kitchen table’ resisted this extreme version. Eventually, a middle-ground was acceded to, with some steak, some wine, some dessert. Michelle has been ardent about promoting fitness at other forums – by pushing for healthy school lunches, growing a vegetable garden at the White House, and modeling a pretty tough fitness regimen herself.

She urges a similar focus on physical and mental health to all young adults who write in with idealistic declarations about changing the world. Self-care has to be folded into caring for the world or anyone else.

Create Space in Partnerships

Barack and Michelle seem to model an idyllic marriage. Michelle is quick to point out that it’s never 50-50 at all times. Life takes twists and turns, thrusting one into the spotlight or hot seat at one phase, while another handles the backend. And vice versa. “At no point will both of you feel like things are perfectly fair and equal. Someone will always be adjusting. Someone will always be sacrificing.”

While they have been through a period when they needed couples counseling, they have weathered the larger storms with mutual affection and sensible give-and-take. She’s also quick to dismiss superficial gestures like bouquets or romantic getaways. It’s more about respect, about allowing each one to be themselves, without stomping out core identities.

Make an Effort to Stay High

While her catchphrase, “When they go low, we go high” became a popular slogan, she cautions that taking the higher ground requires work. Emotional work perhaps, or building psychological resistance, or inner resilience. In order to cultivate such an armor, one needs to draw personal boundaries and foster inner resources. This too is work, but perhaps it’s labor worth doing.

References

Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming In Uncertain Times, Viking (Penguin Random House UK), 2022