Former first lady Michelle Obama addressed her recent absences from political events and rumours of marital troubles during a podcast released Tuesday.
Obama said on the “Work in Progress” podcast with actress Sophia Bush that she now has the opportunity to control her own calendar and can now make “a choice for myself”, reported CNN.
“I could have made a lot of these decisions years ago, but I didn’t give myself that freedom,” Michelle said, adding: “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 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.”
Moreover, Michelle notably skipped President Donald Trump’s second inauguration, as well as the state funeral of former President Jimmy Carter in January.
She then went on to discuss the guilt of saying no and how her recent choices to step away from certain responsibilities raised rumours of a possible divorce from her husband, former President Barack Obama.
“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,” Obama said.
She continued: “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.”
