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Oprah's Super Soul

Michelle Obama: Becoming, Part 2

Oprah's Super Soul

Oprah

Society & Culture

4.632.9K Ratings

🗓️ 19 November 2018

⏱️ 36 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

At the Hearst Tower in New York City, Oprah Winfrey and Michelle Obama sit down for a conversation about Mrs. Obama’s much-anticipated memoir “Becoming.” The two speak in front of an audience that includes a group of local, female high school students. The former first lady, mother, wife, attorney and author discusses the life experiences that have shaped her. She reminisces about her humble childhood on the South Side of Chicago with her family, which she describes as “four corners of a square:” her mother, Marian, her late father, Fraser, and her brother, Craig. Mrs. Obama explains how her parents invested everything they had into her and her brother’s futures. She discusses her years as an attorney and executive in Chicago and how she worked to balance the demands of her career and raising two daughters. Mrs. Obama candidly discusses some of the challenges she and Barack Obama faced during the early years of their marriage, including a stint in counseling. She also opens up about her years in the White House and the pressure of being the “first black family” to live there. Finally, Mrs. Obama explains her thoughts on how she believes President Trump put her family’s safety at risk.

Transcript

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0:00.0

I'm Oprah Winfrey. Welcome to Super Soul Conversations, the podcast. I believe that one of the most valuable gifts you can give yourself is time, taking time to be more fully present.

0:15.0

Your journey to become more inspired and connected to the deeper world around us starts right now.

0:24.0

Welcome to part two of our conversation.

0:27.0

This I love so much on page 112. You describe a moment that cracks me up. I tell you, you say I woke one night to find him, Barack, staring at the ceiling. His profile lit by the glow of street lights outside.

0:41.0

He looked vaguely troubled as if he were pondering something deeply personal. Was it our relationship, the loss of his father? Hey, what are you thinking about, I whispered. He turned to look at me. His smile a little sheepish.

0:56.0

Oh, he said I was just thinking about income inequality.

1:03.0

That's my honey. That was Barack, you know. I mean, you know, here's this guy. And at the time I was a young professional. This is when I was coming into my own.

1:16.0

I had a job that paid more than my parents ever made in their lives. I was rolling with bourgeois class. I mean, my friend's own condos. I had a sob, which was a cool car back then.

1:32.0

I don't know what's cool these days, but a sob back in the day. Oh, yeah, I had a sob. And, you know, that was sort of the, that was the next step. Sort of, okay, you get married. You have a lovely home and on and on and on.

1:48.0

And yes, the bigger problems of the world were important, but the more important thing was where you were going in your career. And I talk about Barack meeting some of my friends and how that didn't really play out because he's the serious sort of income inequality.

2:03.0

And my friends are like, I really let us write. You really let us in into the relationship. I mean, down to the proposal and everything. You let us in.

2:10.0

And you also write about some major differences between the two of you when you started out. You say, I understood it was nothing but good intentions. It would leave him to say, I'm on my way.

2:20.0

Or almost home. Oh, gosh.

2:22.0

And for a while, I believe those words. I'd give the girls their nightly bath, but delayed bed time so they could wait up to give their data hug. And then you describe this scene where you'd wait it up. He says, I'm on my way.

2:33.0

He doesn't come. And then you turn out the lights. I could hear them click off the way you wrote it. Those lights click. You went to bed and you were mad.

2:43.0

I was mad.

2:45.0

This was in the time when we married and he was in politics. And you know, I had to go through the struggle that now that I had sort of.

2:54.0

And we've skipped parts where I actually started to swerve and started to shape my own career. But at a point when you get married and you have kids, you know, your whole plan once again gets unended because now your mom.

3:10.0

And I love being a mother. I love being at home with my girls. I was a working mother juggling everything. I still had my careers. I was running a nonprofit organization.

3:20.0

And I went on to have, you know, some wonderfully interesting opportunities and career opportunities. But that reality of when you get married, especially you get married to somebody who has a career that swallows up everything, which is what politics is.

3:37.0

And I was going to talk about the challenges of finding my footing, finding my voice in a very powerful, with a very powerful personality who was Barack Obama, who taught me how to swerve.

3:51.0

But he also, his swerving just sort of, you know, I'm flailing in the wind. And now I've got two kids and I'm trying to hold everything down. And he's traveling back and forth from Washington or Springfield or wherever it was given whatever office he was holding.

...

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