Michelle Obama about her marriage, miscarriages and having children
Michelle & Barack: A love for life
Michelle Obama met her future husband Barack in 1989, right after university in her first lawyer job. He was a student of their department; The first kiss came on the curb in front of a Baskin Robbins ice cream shop. They married in 1992, and their daughters Malia and Sasha were born in 1998 and 2001.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde chief reporter Meike Dinklage met Michelle Obama for an interview in New York and also questioned the former First Lady about her family life.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde: They describe how you kept the food warm and the children awake in the early years of your marriage, until your husband came home late at night. And how you first had to learn to become independent of your husband. Surprisingly, that you do? despite his own career? first had to understand for themselves.
Michelle Obama: That's true.
But you had to.
Yes, in any case. No matter how strong you are? social norms shape us. They shaped me. I wrestled with these norms.
Because your mother has gone a very different way?
My mother was a traditional housewife and mother. She was happy with it. But there were times when even she had doubts. She once revealed to me that she was thinking of leaving my dad. When my brother read this passage, he told me: "I did not know that !? And I replied, "Yes, because we women talk about such things." I think my mother wanted me to understand that it's part of a marriage and being a woman to always question everything. In any case, it was like this for me, I did not know how I would feel. I did not even know that I would not know how I could feel. You are a young, working woman on your way. But you do not know what the marriage feels like. And until you have children, you do not know how these children take possession of your heart and influence your decisions.
In your book, are you very open about your miscarriage and your hormonal treatments that you did to get pregnant? did you want to break a taboo with it?
Yes for sure. It was not until I spoke of it myself that I learned that other women are alike. But no one has outed. I thought, Wow, if there are so many, why does it feel so lonely? A woman who undergoes that feels alone, like a failure, is insecure. This experience isolates you. That's what we women have to work on? we have to share all our stories with the next generation, the good and the bad.
Did you also think about your two daughters?
I want them to understand how pregnancy really works. How difficult it can be that the biological clock exists. Information is power, for women in all cultures on earth, the most important thing we can pass on to our children. The knowledge about their menstruation, their bodies, how it is to give birth, menopause. Women do not talk about it. So how can we expect these taboos to be broken? We learn as women to hide who we are. That's the core of my book: Find your truth. And I want to be a role model with this message.
VIDEO TIP: 5 highlights from the ChroniquesDuVasteMonde interview with Michelle Obama
TIP: The very personal conversation with Michelle Obama about her marital crises, feelings of motherhood and their commitment to women's rights worldwide you read in the ChroniquesDuVasteMonde 25/18, from 21 November 2018 kiosk.
