Former First Lady Michelle Obama speaks at Obama Foundation Summit in Chicago

[Applause] there's nothing like being introduced by a poet thank you for that i love you babe i love you too and i'm really excited for us to talk with everybody um there is an overture because the way that this conversation was shaped and put together that's really exciting is that so many of you were asked what you wanted to uh talk about with uh with michelle obama and so those questions those hundreds and hundreds of very very rich and wonderful questions were my basis for beginning to craft and shape some themes some areas so your voices are in all of the questions and areas that we will be going over today and so i want to start off by saying that in the arts we often say the specific is universal and the kind of the topic i thought that we were really in the zone is the self in the world so in the arts we say the specific is universal and from the village we can know the world and so today in shaping this conversation around the self and the world and how all of us go about our individual lives from our communities out into larger worlds i was thinking about how thinking about place you went from a girl of the south side of chicago to the global stage filling this room here as we have come together with people who want to understand what we're thinking about from here to there how do our roots define us as we move outward from where we begin and also just to sort of mark the space of the conversation over the course of our many years of friendship and your increasingly public life oh so public um you've always been someone who is self-effacing about your own accomplishments almost a matter of fact about them and very empowering about the collective always turning that individual energy out to out to the collective so we'll be thinking about how we take our power as well and move it out um for other people we're going to talk about how we can demonstrate and teach and encourage young people to keep on keeping on and how taking care of ourselves is a very important part of that and also talk about how art and culture have a very unique and particular role in making our civic space more livable more beautiful more true more hopeful um so that's what we're going to talk sounds good you guys like that [Laughter] okay one snaps that's what you all do yes i know yeah please i love this thing so let's make sure that we do that okay so let's start off with the power of words and inspiration um because we know that words not only matter but also words are how we they carry meaning and they carry who we are our words and our language are the main way that human beings give themselves to each other and say who it is that they are and you have put some words out into the public that have been very very useful to people and i'm i could list many but of course when they go low we go high as much as we can as much as we can that's right yes we always can we don't always have that high place we carry that place yes um so i wonder because that's been such a useful thing to so many people what are what are some words songs poems prayers that have been and are meaningful guides for you you know i've been thinking about this whether they're you know words music all that there are many points of inspiration um for me when you think about those but when i think about the words that stay in my head that guide me what i wake up to every day it's the voice of marion and frazier robinson marion robinson who is sitting over there right now [Applause] because it shows that you know words don't have to be poetic they don't have to be set to music most of the words that guide us are those words that we've heard growing up those messages and for me i had some pretty powerful parents who were very understated and humble in their own rights but i live each day trying to make them proud and i think a lot of that you know comes from my father many of you know my father's story but my parents didn't go to college they were not of wealth they were not of means my father had ms and he was a uh an athlete until he was stricken with ms in the prime of his life he used to box and swim so you imagine someone with that much life all of a sudden for no apparent reason not being able to walk without the assistance of cain and that's how i always knew my father as someone with a disability but the other thing i knew about my father was that even in his disability he commanded a level of respect he was the center of not just our nuclear family but our family my father used to sit in his chair and people would come for advice they would come for money they would come from for love for affirmation he and he would give that of affirmation so willingly um but the thing that i remember about my father is that he never complained he got up he went to work not a a a work that filled him with passion that was something that my parents didn't even understand working for passion you worked to make a living he worked at the water filtration plant right here in chicago his entire life he got up he put on that blue uniform he got in his car and whatever pain he must have been experiencing throughout his life the fatigue that comes from ms the inability to lift your own leg without help and assistance he never complained and i think for me and my brother to grow up watching somebody sacrifice that much someone with that much power and influence and love uh never complain once you know those are the things that i that i the the stories the messages the images that roll around in my head that tell me i have no reason to complain and that i am a blessed child maybe i didn't have much money but i was blessed with the love of a father and a mother who gave me gifts that were priceless and for that i owe so much so i think about that i think about making them proud i think about with every word i i utter what does that mean for them how do i speak to their legacy so i don't know that it's a song if i were to pick a stone it would be a stevie wonder song of any kind if if if there were poetic words there be they'd be the words of a maya angelou powerful you know true um but if they're everyday words they're the words of marion and fraser robinson telling us to do what you say you're gonna do you know to to be honest and true to treat people with dignity and respect and it wasn't just their words it was their actions it was be open-hearted to be empathetic and to make your life useful and to define that usefulness as broadly as you can those words guide me and they led me to barack obama who reminded me very much of my own father in his decency and his honesty and his compassion so that that was my that was my foundation [Music] you know what's so interesting is is also about the words that weren't spoken the words of complaint that weren't spoken and how much silences also teach us um and i think also you know one of the amazing things about you is that you have such a healthy skepticism and i i say that i'm not like true skepticism which is to say i wonder if your parents ever said anything to you along the line of you know and don't believe the hype oh gosh you know having marion robinson in the white house with you for eight years is a is a grounding experience for all of us for every obama marian robinson was just not pressed ever um you know she's like you know i can go home anytime like yes we know you can mom but you know yes it's that sort of matter of fact it's you know um it's not where you live it's not what you have it's who you are um and that was sort of the ethos of my entire family i mean we were working class folks from you know from my in uh my immediate family to my extended family we were a family of carpenters and and teachers and police officers and uh you know seamstress um we weren't lawyers and doctors you know and there was a skepticism of those folks who tried to be uppity you know there was a skepticism of of of unabashed wealth or privilege there was a skepticism my father was somebody who never believed in joining that you were independent throughout your life so that those were kind of messages that we got not just from my father but from my grand parents my grandfather we were privileged to have been raised with all of my grandparents maternal paternal so in chicago we talked about this at dinner but in chicago you were very much a part of your neighborhood and in in in our neighborhood our neighborhood was comprised mostly of my extended family you know so we lived in a house above my maternal aunt we lived around a corner from my grandmother and another aunt my grandfather my mother's father they were separated never divorced but lived around the corner from each other that's black chicago right there they live right around the other corner it's it's functional dysfunction um and they didn't speak to each other either it's like they lived around the corner but you didn't talk to them you didn't talk about the other one with the other one and then my paternal grandparents lived in parkway gardens which is really just a five minute drive from our house um so we grew up with a lot of these messages and you know my maternal grandfather's south side we called him he loved jazz and uh filled the house with music he put speakers in every room of the house even when my mother was young and because he didn't have a lot of money all of his music collection came they were sort of hodge podged together turntables that didn't match a real reel that he found in the alley you know cabinets that he made speakers that he borrowed but the the house was filled with miles davis and coltrane we blew out candles to ella fitzgerald at birthdays and he fried chicken and made milkshakes at midnight and they played midwest until all hours of the night and in that household there was healthy skepticism and fear there was fear of other people fear of leaving that unit there was fear of what could happen to you out there in the big bad world so we came from a place of skepticism but it was interesting that my parents out of all of that they always pushed us beyond that initial fear you know i always talk about one of my favorite comedians chris rock tells this joke about what it's like living in a dangerous neighborhood you know that your world just gets more narrow at first they tell you don't just stay on the block don't leave and then stay in the front yard and then stay on the porch and then stay in your room because it's dangerous and before you know that you're just hopping around on one foot in your living room a lot of black people live like that because fear is real but i had parents who pushed us beyond that fear they encouraged us to not be so skeptical that we couldn't explore and experience and take risks and i don't know where they got that from because that's not how they were raised they were very much raised to be within the limits that were set by segregation and jim crow and lynchings and you know inequality but my parents pushed us beyond that but skepticism still was the foundation that would protect you so i think in many ways it's that skepticism that i carry with me that you know you can don't be too high don't be don't don't don't enjoy the highs too much don't wallow in the lows too much there's a there's a balance that you have to have in life to succeed and it takes a little skepticism to sort of uh hold on to that yes i got some snacks yeah um and i think also in that skepticism our our our real critical thinking tools um in order to i remember there was a magazine profile a new yorker early profile of you where you talked about some of your uncles and said in another social order they would have been bank presidents with the way that they they their quality of mind what they were good at in particular but you were in a particular social order and i think that being able to really have a critical understanding of the lay of the land is also something that that you've brought forward with you you know absolutely and that's you know some of it is life context some of it is study some of it is statistics and understanding charts and graphs and how things work that you know that's also what makes i think barack and i such a good team um you know he is a lot of the head and i operate a lot from the gut you know it's the sort of stuff that you learn about how the world works and that has informed me and maybe it's growing up in the inner city you know just we're walking around the block to school you could get your butt kicked if you talk like a white girl you had to figure out how to exist in a world where you were intelligent but still had to survive yes um so there's there's a lot of that that comes to that that comes into play as i understand how the broad world works and how oppression and segregation and all that you know gritty stuff works yes yes yes and you also just in that beautiful portrait of your growing up we're talking about living with art in the music that was playing with all of those rigged up music rigged up record players and what it is to have art at the ready all the time to help you feel and live life could you talk more about about living life with art in all kinds of ways you know i i don't think i appreciated how much art was a part of our little modest working class life and it was essential my father was an artist a beautiful artist he was a painter and a sculptor again had he been from a different family of a different area era of a different race he might have known that art could have been a way of life but that was to go back to the skepticism that was that was a luxury you know um but to watch him paint and sculpt you know he loved to do nudes and take a plain mold of clay and turn it into from the bottom up something beautiful and he worked with charcoals and oils and water paints it was a gift of of his so there was that part of it i used to paint all of the backgrounds in our little operetta workshop foundation we used to sing and dance i had most of my family they were musicians my great aunt she was a choir director at the church and they taught us to sing and to be in plays and performing was a big part of uh growing up not to mention the music uh you know i don't know that i we we did operetta the opera we didn't sing operatically but you know one one year my brother was hansel in the hansel and gretel production and i was a fairy princess mommy's laughing remembering it was a good one but every year there was some big performance at a church basement or in a school you know a theater that was borrowed and it was sort of a ragtag little theater group that my my aunt used to teach but i think that that was my first those were the little things in my life that were that that brought art into my world but then as i went to school i realized that there were kids who were only there because of art you know that's the power of art that we all know i mean it's it's art is the first language we speak truly you know every child before they can talk they're given some a pencil paper some crayons and they're drawing and it's life that yanks that instinct from them [Music] we're now living in public school systems where art and music and pe the things that bring life and joy are the first things that are cut but when i was growing up those are the things that would hook some of those kids that weren't good at math or reading because their brains worked differently they were motivated by something different for them you would see those kids light up when it was time to draw or to speak or to sing that's the power of the arts because as we know it's often the hook that gets kids to then understand why math is important it's the thing that gets them the school to do reading which is why we made art and music and culture such a centerpiece of our white house because we are trying to remind this country this world that arts are not a luxury you know it's not something to be given to those who can afford it that we have so many talented young people who are shaping this world and can shape a vision it's the thing that unites us i mean we see that with you know my favorite piece of art to date right now is hamilton right i mean we see the power of arts music dance rap poetry spoken word you name it to teach history in a way that that history teacher just can't reach people yes so how we deny that is you know how we don't support that is amazing to me and makes no sense um and i think that also you know you've brought up those all of the culture in your time in the white house and i think that earth wind and fire was the first concert that you had yes and so what i thought was um governors about that imagine you see these governors jamming i know they did though right i mean you know it called them into that space but i think that what was so important about that was it was saying that just because you grooved to it doesn't mean that it is not high art what it would take for any musician to have the precision and bright light of earth wind and fire's music it is virtuosity it is an intellect it is a skill it is a talent it's a gift yes and we take it for granted because we enjoy it which is a sad kind of thing yeah um yes and i think also moving out you know to me what i see in that is earth wind and fire is of the basement you know earth wind and fire is of the red light of yes of intimate spaces but then it was on the you know on the world stage i'm just carrying on and so you didn't just do that um and so i think that um that what is so i think about you know the bard of chicago gwendolyn brooks whose name i always must call when we're in her space she had a wonderful poem where she contrasted the chicago picasso which is a wonderful thing that it's in downtown space with the wall of respect to talk about what it meant in community for people to experience art and beauty and great greatness as a way of saying this is who we are and this has brought us together um well and you think about how little art there is public art there is in communities on the south side which is you know one of the things we hope to do with the obama presidential center you know and there's there need to be places for public art outside just like downtown just like the picasso just like the bean you know there's nothing that those pieces in communities are few and far between and they become the gathering places for community not just a place to see beauty and possibility but you know it's a place for people to come together and we deserve those things in our communities just as much as the rest of the city that's right uh i haven't even turned a card oh we gotta turn a card let's let's turn a card but we've covered all of it so words and inspiration so now um this is an interesting um zone and there were some wonderful questions from one from sri lanka and some others about using your voice um and about so moving out of the zone of of the voice in an artistic sense how do you use your voice to express disagreement how can you be productive in disagreement what do you know about that where did you see that modeled and how do you take that forward when thinking about this question i started a little bit i pulled back a bit because i think the question of how you use your voice comes after you find your voice yeah and i think that that's something that a lot of people take for granted that having a voice just happens you know so in order to know how to use it and how to use it carefully and how to debate you have to find it and i think in particular for women as we're seeing now finding that voice yes you know it doesn't just happen overnight and i think about me and sort of where did my voice come from again we talked about this at our table our dinner but again going back to marion and frazier i realized now in hindsight that i had some special parents who from a very very young age again not people who read parenting books they probably didn't think that their role models of parents were as perfect for them my grandparents were better grandparents than they were parents but for some reason my parents understood that teaching children at a young age that their voice was valuable was important so i didn't live in a household where kids were taught to be seen and not heard um i was allowed to speak my mind at three and four they asked my opinion they wanted input from me and my brother about things that involved the family and life we knew about money and paying bills and we knew about issues in the family you had to be respectful but the notion that a five-year-old wouldn't have feelings about how their life went was not something that my parents believed in you know my mother always said she was raising adults she wasn't raising children so she spoke to us as people because that's what you needed to practice and i think that all of that early stuff for those of us who are parents out there who are thinking about how to empower our children it starts very early so you can't shush them because you don't agree with them because every time you shush them you're telling them or are you telling them to respect your elders even when they're wrong there's a there's a difference between just respecting something that you see is wrong and and not feeling it and speaking out about it you do it in a respectful way but you're never i we were never taught that our what we saw and what we felt wasn't real you know so if a teacher treated me unfairly in class i couldn't just immediately go off on them i could come home and go off about it in the kitchen and then we'd talk about it and then marian would hustle on up to school and quietly go off on them unbeknownst to me i've heard of many teachers that got shut down you know and it's like well you going back to school and you do what you're supposed to do but i always knew i had a defender i had an advocate which made me ready to use my voice yes you know so when we think about women in particular you know we ask them to speak up we ask them to speak their mind we ask them to just say no to speak out against sexual harassment to speak out against inequality but if we don't teach our young girls to speak at an early age that doesn't just happen you know that's not it takes practice to have a voice you have to use it again and again and again before you can say no or stop don't touch me you know if you're taught that adults are right all the time it's hard to go against the power that is around you and i i don't think that i had those roadblocks when i was young so i thought i was funny i thought i was smart when i was little i thought that i made sense yes you know so from moving from that place of understanding the power and the rightness and the truth of my voice then how you use it is more linked to your values than anything else right that's right and then it goes back to how you were raised because when you have a voice you know you just can't use it any kind of way you know you can't just say what's that this whole tell it like it is business that's nonsense you know you don't just say what's on your mind you don't tweet every thought most of your first initial thoughts are not yes worthy of the light of day yes and i'm not talking about anybody in particular i'm talking about us at all because everybody does that i mean that's the thing about young people it's like tweeting and social media that is a powerful weapon that we just hand over to little kids you know a 10 year old here you go tell it like it is and it's like no you don't you need to think and spell it right and have good grammar too yes and i think also that understanding of not only of having a voice but also understanding that you have advocates in your parents and that is part of that i mean i think about that was definitely i'm thinking was i taught that way explicitly and i think i was actually and was also taught my dad always i had a crisp bill on me at all times because he said if you have to leave the job the man the situation danger you got your 20 got your 20. it was a 20 and it was chris but you get out and then people will help you sort the other things out later and that that is a profound uh thing to carry in this life with all of its unexpected things but when you have the power of support yes then i think how you debate and you you're a lot more respectful yeah you're a lot more cautious you know you're not so ready you're a little you're humble you're a little skeptical and that skepticism is not just about the other person but you have to have a healthy skepticism in your own view that you are not always right you know that you have to as barakat said we all have to be open to the differences and the possibilities of other people's truths so you're careful with your words you're careful with how you debate and i think you know when you're the the first lady or the president the commander-in-chief and you have that voice and that power and that platform i think the response what comes with that is a responsibility to know that every word you utter has consequences yes you know it it can and i said this in the course of many of my speeches that words matter at this level um they and you learn how much they matter at this level but it that doesn't mean that anybody in this room is free to be careless with words and how they debate because it at this level you see how much they ma words matter but the truth of how much words matter is true for every each and every one of us so you can't just slash and burn up folks just because you think you're right you know you have to treat people as if they are precious all of them even the people you don't agree with if we thought that way you know if if we lived life that way we wouldn't have to be taught how to debate we would just be treating each other as decent human beings um and we would treat one another with respect but again i think that starts with the values that you learn growing up because if nobody's valued your voice it's hard for you to know control and compromise and it starts very young i think and the consistency of seeing those values throughout your life affects how you debate how you disagree how you talk how you advocate how you speak up for yourself and it's all practice and when that when that leads us into civic work community work and this is a you know sort of a little bit of a move into thinking about how you take care of yourself so that you can be a helpful person in your community so that all of this wisdom can be shared i wanted to um just read a few lines from a poem that i really love that feels like it's speaking to um to what you were describing earlier with your parents and maybe it's not here but it's by marge piercy a great detroit poet just a few lines and this is her poem many of you probably know this it's called to be of use and uh the excerpt goes the people i love the best jump into work head first without dallying in the shadows i love people who strain in the muck and the mud to move things forward who do what has to be done again and again the pitcher cries out for water to carry and a person for work that is real so that's for marge percy uh piercings to be of use i i i love it um and um i think that that's all of you here um uh you are the people who just get up and do what has to be done that is you that is the president um but you know you can give and give and give to be helpful but how do you think about staying strong and the role of self-care not as a luxury but as a part of being a helpful person in community oh yeah it's stuff we talk my girlfriend's circle we talk about that all the time self-care and i think self-care is something that you have to practice as well but you have to value yourself to want to care about yourself and it starts there you have to think that you're worthy you know because sometimes a lot of of us do gooders a lot of us doers we're doing for others because somehow we can't also we can't do it for ourselves so the work that we do sometimes is a distraction from focusing on what we as the individual needs it's easy to focus on fixing somebody else you know because it allows you to ignore the stuff that you need to work on yep internally so it's a sometimes it's a distraction it's a good socially acceptable distraction but it's a distraction nonetheless um but i think it starts with thinking about that that point it's like what are we all doing for ourselves in the midst of us how do we how do we expect to keep going and doing for others if we ourselves are not emotionally physically healthy you know if we don't take that time in that moment and for for for so many it is really just a moment you know it's a moment to take some time out to exercise it's it it you know nobody's telling anybody to run a marathon you know it's just a matter of like figure out how to walk every day how to stand up how to move your body you know how to uh you know get blood plump pumping through you it doesn't have to be miraculous but we have to think about when it's time to do that why what stops us and and that everybody in this room has to answer that for themselves because those are the demons that haunt us the things that keep us from taking care of ourselves but you also learn when you're a mother there's something and i learned a lot of this when i became a mother because you when you have children you have to be fiercely organized to get anything done and i learned that if i don't put myself up on the priority list that somehow my kids will eventually get knocked down on that list if i'm not protecting my time if i'm not learning how to say no even to the best things even to the most worthy things because i need to sleep where i need to eat or i need to take time out to exercise that i am no good to my children and once again as one of those do-gooders it's easier for me to make changes because of this baby than it is to do it for myself but we need to be having that conversation uh because our health is it is the thing that will keep us going which is why i focus so much on health and nutrition in the white house it's something that we cannot afford to ignore that self-care that meditation that time out that yoga that whatever that is for you it has to happen so one of the tricks that i learned and i learned this as a working mother because i looked up and i realized a year can go by and i talked to my sister-in-law about this too that you say yes to everybody else first you say yes to the conference yes to the rally yes to the speech yes to the you know to the political event and before you know it your calendar is booked right your whole year you have given it away if you think about it by so readily saying yes to everyone first you look up and you don't have time because let me tell you when people are trying to get stuff done they're organized they got people they're calling you year in advance i started to get insulted when people would call me a year in advance because i'm sort of like so you want me to give you in a year you want me to tell you now in a year that you can have this whole day before me and my kids have ever even thought about what that day means for us well do we want that day do my kids need that day for a class or a potluck or because what would happen is that you'd say yes and then little malia would come up and it's like we got a class play well mommy gave that time away a year ago malia's like well i wish i had a scheduler i would have gotten on your calendar sooner but i'm four and you start thinking to yourself well yeah that's kind of crazy um and it plays out in terms of whether you're going to go to the gym or not you know i mean as my mom says we all get up and we go to work sick tired you name it but minute you talk about can i walk on the treadmill for 30 minutes i don't have time so i started working my schedule so we'd start the year before i would do anything i would put me and my kids on my calendar first so that takes work and it would you know and i granted i had helps and assistants and people who could look at calendars and when you're first lady you got a lot of help so the school will actually like change report card dates for you it's like we really want to come can you figure this out can you really tell us when the class play will be can you organize this in a year but we would force the school to answer some questions and it would it would take a couple of weeks to get them to like make sure every parent teacher conference was on there every school game every tournament and we put i put that on the the calendar first then i would put me on there when do i want to hang out with my girlfriends when am i going to exercise you know when am i going to take a vacation when am i going to breathe how how do i want my life to flow first i put that on the calendar yep and then what was left was left for everybody else work well barack was on there too let me not forget because just in case he slips in honey you were there too put him on he was he was up there he was up high but see so what i mean what you're hearing is gospel here because i think that it's actually very profound and you always had a great deal of clarity we became mothers within two months of each other with the children they were on the floor playing with each other and we'd be talking and drinking wines like they're fine just a little wine it was before they could walk and get into this a little bit um but but i mean you but you always had clarity also that you had to be systematic that you had to you know put the oxygen mask on first and also that this myth of the superwoman you know this idea that you would only be made crazy trying to do everything simultaneously yeah and that very you know kind of almost methodical breakdown and ordering um is a hugely important principle that just i think needs to be drilled into and that's we are not ruthless about ourselves you know we do when when you talk about all of that that we do we're all everybody in this room is used to doing that for their project for their organization for their kids for their for their uh program participants for their community we all operate like that everybody in this room operates like that we just cut that off when it comes to our lives we don't apply those same principles and that's what i said to myself i'm going to apply that because look i can get a lot done i'm very ruthlessly efficient but i have to be organized about me i have to be as organized about my life as i am about my work i have to be i have to plan my happiness that's the thing we think happiness just happens and it can but you gotta work it some happiness too you gotta think about in this year when am i gonna laugh when am i gonna have fun when am i gonna stop and smell the roses and then you gotta plan it yeah because if you don't the work the need the agenda will always overcome everything and look the thing is the work that need the agenda will always be there because even in the process of me putting myself higher up on my list the work was still there yes you know we got a lot done in the eight years that i was first lady quite frankly i'm pretty proud of that yes but i i was able to do that and and create sanity for my team too because a lot of us are working and leading teams of people and they will take their sanity cues from us at the top so if we're just crazy pushing all the time for every what i would tell my team for every event i do that means you're doing like three times the work just to get it done so and tina's over there laughing but i would tell tina don't put it on the calendar because that means like three times the work for everybody else so everybody's got to be ready to understand that so i always put work and time into context yes and that's something that we we don't do we just let it happen we let it take take over us and i think we can do good for others and take and we can do a better job of doing good for others if we take care of ourselves but we have to start having those conversations and explicitly i mean to to the question of women and women friends and sister friends you know and and this business of scheduling your laughter which um i i have observed that in the presidential years it feels that your your friendships with women have deepened your your you know circle of of us has has deepened you fed that um and we have been fed we fed each other in that but can you talk about your women friends and laughing and and why that's not let me tell you i love my husband and he is my rock but my girlfriends are my sanity um and when you live eight years in the white house where you can't even open a window you can't walk out on your balcony without notifying three people so that they can shut down security your walk outside is a walk around that same circle in the south lawn over and over and over again because the thought of you leaving those gates requires 50 people's attention and work and inconvenience when you live like that for eight years you need your girlfriends you know and in order to you know and and nothing is spontaneous and so i i learned because all our spontaneity was basically taken away from us um you know it so you have to plan when you can't be spontaneous there was never any such thing as me i even do this now it's like can i leave i'm asking somebody can i walk out the door yet i don't move until some 30 year old tells me [Laughter] ma'am you can you can leave now like okay all right yeah thank you thank you very much um so i had to plan my time with my girlfriends that kept me grounded you know and brought me laughter i mean i have a whole and i have a crew of just wonderful i am blessed to have a wonderful community of girlfriends and people i've raised my kids with and you know i have a whole set of mothers at our girls school who keeps me out of the gossip but in notified by what's going on it's like ooh girl you don't want to go to that potluck [Music] okay thank you um so all of that has kept me whole in a way that and and you know that's something for all folks but i think women we do it better than men but you know i know sad for you guys y'all should get you some friends [Applause] friends [Applause] get you some friends and talk to each other because that's the other thing we do we straighten each other out on some things our girlfriends we was like and i just wish like sometimes baracki who are you talking to [Laughter] and it can't just be marty this is a home this is a home conversation but every one of you is i see a lot of men laughing you all need to go talk to each other about your stuff because there's so much of it it's so it's so messy talk about why y'all the way you are because you're running the world and i know that's one of the questions it's like raising our men we got to rest talking to my mother about that the other day it's like the problem in the world today is we we we love our our boys and we raise our girls you know we raise them to be strong and sometimes we take care not to hurt men and and i think we pay for that a little bit and that's a we thing cause we're raising them you know and it's powerful to have strong men but what does that strength mean you know does it mean respect does it mean responsibility does it mean compassion or are we protecting our men too much so they feel a little entitled and a little you know uh you know a little self-righteous sometimes but that's kind of on us too as as as women and mothers yeah you know as we nurture men and push girls to be perfect [Music] yeah i wanted to get more deeply into that no because um i and i was thinking about the conversation that you had recently with shonda rhimes and you were talking about um child rearing and you you said we have to cherish our girls you put the word cherish and i was like yes yes yes and i also as a mother of boys and as a you know sort of auntie too many thought but what about our boys uh so okay you know can you can you can you say more because i also think not just our black boys but you know i i think that cherishing black boys um is necessary in a world where they are not always safe loved or valued i mean i know we see that the same way but i'm really interested in thinking further about what we teach our girls and our boys what cherishing and love means for boys who are also carrying sometimes a responsibility that is too much when it comes with all that you know be strong lead the way yeah yeah so and look and i i don't have boys i'm not raising boys i'm raising girls so a lot of my focus is a mother you know i'm thinking about how do i make sure these girls are sturdy and able to sort of exist in this world where and it's a world that is dangerous yeah for women you know um but i think it goes back to marion robinson it's like we have to raise our children to be people whether they have had struggles or whatever the world has for them it's we have to raise them to be ready to be independent well-meaning kind compassionate people and i don't know that that's different for boys or girls regardless of what they've they're confronting in the world sometimes we treat our children too preciously because of the issues they've dealt with i mean it's like barack and i thought about with malia and sasha okay we could have spent eight years feeling sorry for them that they were living in a bubble that every misstep for them would be on youtube or you know that they had to drive around in their teenage years with men with guns that you know their privacy that they didn't have access to their father in a way we could have felt bad for them and that there would have been a truth there but our view was that this is where this is life for them this is their life and we can't apologize for the life that they have because a whole lot of it is good so it's like get up get up go to school don't feel sorry for yourself yep it's hard but it's hard for everybody go to school get over it so for our men it's true life's hard it ain't fair but you got to get up you got still got to be a man you got to get out there you i can't protect you from everything i can't cherish you to death so i have to re we have to raise our children to be the adults that we want them to be yes and that starts young so you can't be so afraid that life will break them that you don't prepare them for life so i i think that it that is as true for our boys as it is for our girls but sometimes our fear keeps us from pushing our kids out into the the cold cruel world and then they're not ready and we wonder why yeah yeah we wonder why they're broken why they are you know why they're nervous why they're fearful why they you know but it starts young yep those messages yeah we have amazingly come together and we didn't even i my cards i didn't even we didn't get through cards we just talked around all kinds of things but i did want to end with a wonderful question so two one question from me you know we're gonna end here and another wonderful wonderful question from the audience okay um from a listener in detroit um actually i don't i just want to say a listener in detroit like i was a dj okay might not have been a listener in detroit um but so my my question is um is an example of something that has given you hope in the last week oh and the audience question which is a beautiful one is what has recently brought you to tears and you could answer that in a couple of different ways however you wish hope is right in this room this these this summit all of you here the conversations the you know your voices your missions your goals the possibilities that you all have to be leaders in the world that that gives me hope you know i can sleep better after this because this isn't just happening here it's happening around the world so thank you for giving me personally a little hope it's been fun to watch and it will be fun to watch what you continue to do what has brought me to tears in fun ways in all ways the probably the answer is children children you know i mean my children have brought me my two girls have brought me so much happiness and pride that how they have carried themselves and responded to pressures that they didn't ask for living a life that they didn't want um and coming out on the other end as good solid people yes that happiness and pride can bring me to tears just talking about them um you know tears of sadness children you know when i see any child mistreated or unloved or uneducated or unwanted when we don't value our children the the most precious people on this planet and we do it so often when we don't want our taxes raised or we don't want kids to be educated equally or we don't really focus on health care and we're not thinking about our environment i've worked it in hospitals i've seen children dying of cancer at very young ages little babies in the nicu and anytime i think about the brokenness that is in us that doesn't force us to get our acts together for our children you know when we talk about immigration and our daca kids and we talk about you know what we want for this world when i think about what we are not willing to do for our kids that brings me to tears yes um but then i can you know have tears of just so much complete joy when i think of all the interact actions that i've had with children and over the course of my life and in the last eight years you know the little girl scouts uh sleeping having a sleepover on the white house lawn you know uh little trick-or-treaters um little kids that you know are just so full of wonder and joy the little ones who don't know to be hateful yet who are still you know they still rely on us um they still look to us to protect them and to love them and they are so open you know so that brings me to tears that just the that sheer happiness and the innocence of children yes and i always think that if we are guided by that very raw instinct in us as the producers of human life that if we you know just act every day not for ourselves not for some greater good but just for the little kids in our lives you know and we we treat those kids and we think that the kids that we know the ones that we've born life to that we aunty and uncle and we mentor if we value them and we value all kids as much as we value them we will be fine if we operate with that level of goodness in our hearts yes but that requires us is the grown-ups to sacrifice a lot more than we're willing to do it requires us to be put on the back burner in the way that my mother and father put themselves on the back burner to make us the most special people in the world so we have to get out of the way our egos our you know our hatred our jealousy we have to push that all down as the adults in the room because we are now all adults and we have to get out of the way for the possibility of children and i hope that every one of you in this room leads with that sentiment with that compassion with that vision that this isn't about us yeah it's about our kids and if we can do that we'll get this right yes you know but that puts us way far down on the totem pole you know our egos have to be checked in a very powerful way yes and uh we have work to do on that front well thank you thank you guys thank you elizabeth and i have my girlfriend one more thing i'm concluding this which is to say um just that i didn't mean to um but what i just wanted to say in saying thank you to you is that the the your intimate self the self you are up close the self that i feel so lucky to know and love is the same self that you share that self is consistent and i think that in that is a powerful powerful powerful lesson and example of knowing yourself and sharing that love in a consistent way and um for that we all thank you so thank you thanks babe you guys thanks so much [Applause] okay [Applause]

Channel: ABC News

Views: 99,691

Keywords: michelle obama, michelle obama live, michelle obama interview, michelle obama foundation summit, obama foundation summit live, obama foundation summit michelle, elizabeth alexander, elizabeth alexander michelle obama, elizabeth alexeander obama foundation, obama foundation, obama foundation summit events, michele obama dicussion, michelle obama remarks, michelle obama news, politics, charity

Id: W1UNGaSlAKQ

Length: 56min 53sec (3413 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 01 2017