Michelle Obama

Here’s a memory, which like most memories is imperfect and subjective—collected long ago like a beach pebble and slipped into the pocket of my mind.

find ways to adapt. If you’re in it forever, there’s really no choice.

You find ways to adapt. If you’re in it forever, there’s really no choice.

hoped to be exactly like my own mother and at the same time nothing like her at all.

Ultimately, though, like so many things, it was a matter of perception—how we decided to look at what was in front of us.

were me, as I’d once been. And I was them, as they could be.

I felt sometimes like a swan on a lake, knowing that my job was in part to glide and appear serene, while underwater I never stopped pedaling

Grief and resilience live together.

me, becoming isn’t about arriving somewhere or achieving a certain aim. I see it instead as forward motion, a means of evolving, a way to reach continuously toward a better self.

Everyone on earth, they’d tell us, was carrying around an unseen history, and that alone deserved some tolerance.