It all started with online impulse shopping early in the pandemic.
“We were all at home watching what felt like our country and our world unraveling. The death tolls mounting, violence, the insurrection, healthcare system crushed, all of it,” Obama, 58, tells PEOPLEin an exclusive interview for the new issue. “I was in a low place.”
She picked up the knitting needles, and, watching YouTube tutorials, learned to use them. Her small exercise of control over a ball of yarn, Obama says, helped quiet her anxiety when everything else felt out of control.
Michelle Obama knitting in June 2022.Merone Hailemeskel
And her newest book was born.
InThe Light We Carry— part memoir, part self-help and scheduled for release on Nov. 15 — Obama shares stories of how she has learned toovercome not only the trauma of these anxious times, but with her own lifelong fear of change and struggle with self-doubt.
The book emerged, she says, from questions she was getting amid the 2020-2021 pandemic and political unrest — fromher daughters, her girlfriends and in letters from people around the country. “Everyone was searching for some answers of how to cope. And for some reason they were asking me, ‘What do you do?’ I had to start thinking about that,” she says.
For more on PEOPLE’s interview with Michelle Obama, listen below to our daily podcast PEOPLE Every Day.
“… Over the 58 years that I’ve lived, I can look back and I can say, this is how I deal with fear. These are the things I say to myself when I need to pick myself up. This is how I stay visible in a world that doesn’t necessarily see a tall Black woman. This is how I stay armored up when I’m attacked. The book is that offering.”
Opening up in the book on everything from her awkwardness at making new friends (“It’s hard to put yourself out there,” she tells PEOPLE) to her personal experience with racism, parenting, marriage and menopause, Obama acknowledges that she’s opening herself up to the judgment of strangers.
“Yes,Michelle Obamastruggles with fear. You’re putting your most vulnerable thoughts on paper and it’s about to go on bookshelves. My first reaction is, ‘Why did you do this? People are going to judge it,'” she says. But, she adds, “That’s the only way I know how to be… honest about myself first and trying to stay vulnerable. I think people learn not through edict, but through stories.”
Leaning on Friends
These women, Obama says, “they help me vent, they help me see myself. They give me laughter and love.” And she’s always growing that circle, even when it’s uncomfortable.
Obama tells the story of her “tentative dance” with one close friend she first met in the early months of being first lady, when the woman’s daughter came to the White House for a play date with Sasha.
Making new friends “is a vulnerable task,” Obama says.
“And yes, it is hard for the first lady of the United States. I thought it would be fun for people to understand that even in that time when I was working on initiatives and helping my husband manage his crises, one of the big things I was trying to do was create a normal life for my girls. Part of that normalcy was having other friends who were mothers in their community, and figuring out how to do that tentative dance when somebody can’t approach you because there are 12 Secret Service people around you, and just an aura of untouchability, so then it was up to me to extend that hand.”
Looking in the Mirror
Obama also hits that nerve in almost all women: the one that cringes in front of a mirror.
“I personally have plenty of mornings when I flip on the bathroom light, take one look, and desperately want to flip it off again,” Obama writes in her upcoming book.
On those mornings, she only sees her flaws — “what’s dry and puffy.” But, she says, she’s practicing being kinder to the woman in her mirror.
“I thought about what are the messages that I’m giving myself every day, and how do I reverse that trend? How do I light up for myself first?
“So today when I’m looking at the mirror, I still see what’s wrong, but I try to push those thoughts out and say, ‘Wow, you are healthy. Look at your skin. Look how happy you look, your smile.’ I try to find the things about me that I love and start my day a little more kind. And that’s just a small simple tool. It doesn’t require a gym membership. It doesn’t require anybody else.”
Curling Up on the Couch
For more of Obama’s interview with PEOPLE, including a first-look exclusive excerpt ofThe Light We Carry, pick up the new “Sexiest Man Alive” issue on newsstands Friday.
source: people.com
