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Your story is what you have, what you will always have. It is something to own.

Michelle Obama

The punches hurt, even if I understood that they had little to do with who I really was as a person.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Hurt Myself Person Understand
I just wanted to achieve. Or maybe I didn’t want to be dismissed as incapable of achievement.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Achievement Myself Success Worth
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
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
I was determined to be someone who told the truth, using my voice to lift up the voiceless when I could, and to not disappear on people in need. I understood that when I showed up somewhere,
MICHELLE OBAMA

Determination Myself Need People True Understand Voice
there’s no straight line between effort and reward.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Effort Limitation Reward
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
Changing the big picture takes time.. and the best things to do is focus on the things that we can make in our lives if we’re doing all that. That becomes the collage of real change
MICHELLE OBAMA

Change Focus Live Photograph Reality
For me, marriage was more like a full-on merger, a reconfiguring of two lives into one, with the well-being of a family taking precedence over any one agenda or goal.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Family Goal Live Marriage Myself
The noise doesn’t go away, but the most successful people I know have figured out how to live with it, to lean on the people who believe in them, and to push onward with their goals.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Believe Goal Live People Success
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
One of the lessons that I grew up with was to always stay true to yourself and never let what somebody else says distract you from your goals. And so when I hear about negative and false attacks, I really don’t invest any energy in them, because I know who I am.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Energy Goal Grow Up Investment Lesson Negative Oneself True
You’ve got to be twice as good to get half as far.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Character Goodness Success Yourself
What I notice about men, all men, is that their order is me, my family, God is in there somewhere, but me is first.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Family God Man Myself
Inspiration on its own was shallow; you had to back it up with hard work.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Inspirational Shallow Success
Everything was not lost. This was the message we needed to carry forward. It’s what I truly believed. It wasn’t ideal, but it was our reality—the world as it is. We needed now to be resolute, to keep our feet pointed in the direction of progress.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Believe Direction Ideal Lost Myself Need Ourselves Reality True

Your story is what you have, what you will always have. It is something to own.

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Your story is what you have, what you will always have. It is something to own.

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