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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.

Michelle Obama

And there’s grace in being willing to know and hear others. This, for me, is how we become.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Human Myself Willing
In my blinding drive to excel, in my need to do things perfectly, I’d missed the signs and taken the wrong road.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Myself Need Perfection Road Wrong
At fifty-four, I am still in progress, and I hope that I always will be.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Hope Improvement Mindset Myself
What do you want to be when you grow up? As if growing up is finite. As if at some point you become something and that’s the end.
MICHELLE OBAMA

End Grow Up Yourself
I began to understand that his version of hope reached far beyond mine: It was one thing to get yourself out of a stick place, I realized. It was another thing entirely to try and get the place itself unstuck.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Beginning Beyond Hope Myself Place Thinking Understand Yourself
Even if we didn’t know the context, we were instructed to remember that context existed. Everyone on earth, they’d tell us, was carrying around an unseen history, and that alone deserved some tolerance.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Carry Deserve Existence History Remember Tolerance
This may be the fundamental problem with caring a lot about what others think: It can put you on the established path—the my-isn’t-that-impressive path—and keep you there for a long time.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Care Establishment Fundamental Path People Problem Thinking
Good relationships feel good. They feel right. They don’t hurt.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Feeling Goodness Hurt Relationship Right
I was deeply, delightfully in love with a guy whose forceful intellect and ambition could possibly end up swallowing mine.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Ambitious Force Intellectual Love Myself Possible
I look back on the discomfort of that moment now and recognize the more universal challenge of squaring who you are with where you come from and where you want to go.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Challenge Comfortable Moments Myself Yourself
It’s remarkable how a stereotype functions as an actual trap. How many angry black women have been caught in the circular logic of that phrase? When you aren’t being listened to, why wouldn’t you get louder? If you’re written off as angry or emotional, doesn’t that just cause more of the same?
MICHELLE OBAMA

Angry Black Emotional Logic Woman
I hate diversity workshops. Real change comes from having enough comfort to be really honest and say something very uncomfortable.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Comfortable Hate Honesty Myself
Kids will invest more, when they feel they’re being invested in.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Children Feeling Investment Worth
Marriage, he told me early on, struck him as an unnecessary and overhyped convention.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Himself Marriage Necessary
I have had to learn that my voice has value. And if I don’t use it, what’s the point of being in the room?
MICHELLE OBAMA

Learning Myself Value Voice
just do what works for you, because there will always be someone who thinks differently.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Different Thinking Yourself

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.

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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.

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Popular Authors

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