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There’s a power in allowing yourself to be known and heard, in owning your unique story, in using your authentic voice. And there’s a grace in being willing to know and hear others.

Michelle Obama

Since stepping reluctantly into public life, I’ve been held up as the most powerful woman in the world and taken down as an angry black woman. I’ve wanted to ask my detractors which part of that phrase matters to them the most—is it angry or black or woman ?
MICHELLE OBAMA

Black Life Oppression Power Woman
Good relationships feel good. They feel right. They don’t hurt.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Feeling Goodness Hurt Relationship Right
I just wanted to achieve. Or maybe I didn’t want to be dismissed as incapable of achievement.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Achievement Myself Success Worth
You don’t really know how attached you are until you move away, until you’ve experienced what it means to be dislodged, a cork floating on the ocean of another place.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Attachment Experience Ocean Place Yourself
Life was teaching me that progress and change happen slowly. Not in two years, four years, or even a lifetime. We were planting seeds of change, the fruit of which we might never see. We had to be patient.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Change Life Myself Patience Teaching
No one, I realized, was going to look out for me unless I pushed for it.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Effort Inspirational Myself
Failure is a feeling long before it becomes an actual result. It’s vulnerability that breeds with self-doubt and then is escalated, often deliberately, by fear.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Doubt Failure Fear Feeling Result Vulnerable
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
The lesson being that in life you control what you can.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Control Lesson Life 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
Now that I’m an adult, I realize that kids know at a very young age when they’re being devalued, when adults aren’t invested enough to help them learn. Their anger over it can manifest itself as unruliness. It’s hardly their fault. They aren’t bad kids. They’re just trying to survive bad circumstances.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Age Children Enough Investment Myself Survive Young
If you don’t get out there and define yourself, you’ll be quickly and inaccurately defined by others.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Character Quick 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.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Collection Imperfection Memories Mindset
I’ve smiled for photos with people who call my husband horrible names on national television, but still want a framed keepsake for their mantel.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Husband Myself Photograph Smile
Kids will invest more, when they feel they’re being invested in.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Children Feeling Investment Worth
Am I good enough? Yes, I am.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Enough Goodness Myself Self Love Worth

There’s a power in allowing yourself to be known and heard, in owning your unique story, in using your authentic voice. And there’s a grace in being willing to know and hear others.

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Popular Authors

There’s a power in allowing yourself to be known and heard, in owning your unique story, in using your authentic voice. And there’s a grace in being willing to know and hear others.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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