A note from Wild Card host Rachel Martin: Michelle Obama has lived a lot of her adult life under immense scrutiny, which meant carefully thinking through every word she uttered in public.
But she is in a place in her life now where she gets to integrate her public and private self a little more. And that means saying "no" to some of the things that are expected of her, like attending President Trump's inauguration, or former President Jimmy Carter's funeral. She knows that those decisions were scrutinized in the press. "Whatever the backlash was," she says, "I had to sit in it and own it. But I didn't regret it."
Her current avenue for sharing more of herself is the new podcast she co-hosts with her brother called IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson. On Wild Card, she talked about not feeling like she's been able to realize her own ambition, the words her mom shared with her at the end of her life, and the divorce gossip surrounding her and former President Barack Obama.
This Wild Card interview has been edited for length and clarity. Host Rachel Martin asks guests randomly-selected questions from a deck of cards. Watch or listen to the full podcast above, or read an excerpt below.
Interview highlights
On the scrutiny she got for not attending Carter's funeral or Trump's inauguration.
Michelle Obama: One of the major decisions I made this year was to stay put and not attend funerals and inaugurations and all the things that I'm supposed to attend. That was a part of me using my ambition to say, "Let me define what I want to do, apart from what I'm supposed to do, what the world expects of me." And I have to own that. Those are my choices. Whatever the backlash was, I had to sit in it and own it. But I didn't regret it, you know? It's my life now, and I can say that, now. But we'll see. Maybe next year, we sit down, I'll go, "You know, Rachel, I went a little too far." [laughs]
On the divorce rumors that spread in the wake of her not being at the inauguration.
Obama: The fact that people don't see me going out on a date with my husband sparks rumors of the end of our marriage. It's like, "OK, so we don't Instagram every minute of our lives. We are 60. We're 60, y'all. You just are not gonna know what we're doing every minute of the day.
On feeling like she has never been able to realize her own ambition because she has always put family first, and how now she has the chance to for the first time in her life.
Rachel Martin: Has ambition ever led you astray?
Obama: I don't know if my ambition has ever fully been able to actualize itself because of the nature of what me and my husband have done.
Martin: As a team. It wasn't about your individual ambition.
Obama: Right. It was the team ambition. And I went along, arguably kicking and screaming, right? And you know, I think I'm now at a stage in my life where all my choices are mine. Now I can say that whatever I'm doing from this point on is about my ambition.
And that's fairly new, right? Because as a working mother, I – you know, I think all of that stuff, it kind of cut my ambitions short a little bit. Because I had to make a set of decisions: "OK, my husband's over here, I've got these kids over here. I don't know if I can afford to be ambitious right now. So I have to take a step back." Even though ambition is there, I can see where I can make more money, I could do that. But, you know, I got these little kids that I love. And I do wanna go to the Halloween parade, and I wanna – you know?
So I think I kind of squelched my ambition. But now is a time for me to embrace my own ambition and to define it for me. So maybe the answer is, "We'll see." Because I think I'm just now stepping, fully stepping, into my own ambition. And right now, I have not regretted it.
On reflecting on death.
Martin: How often do you think about death?
Obama: My husband thinks this is morbid, but at 61, you know, if I am lucky, if I am truly blessed, I have like 25 more summers. If you're not mindful about time, like – we've been out of office for 10 years. What happened? [laughs] What happened in those 10 years, you know? I mean, I did a lot, right? I mean, two, three books, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. There's a lot that happened, but [snaps] it went by fast.
And I'm at the stage of life where I want the next 10 years to go by slowly. Because guess what? I love life. I love my life. I love life. But what I feel is that if I'm not mindful about it, the years slip away. And you wind up spending a year doing what? Did you do anything you wanted to? Did you spend time with the people that you wanted to spend time with, doing the things that you wanted to do? And there's a time in life for all young people where you just don't have that luxury 'cause you're grinding and growing and building. You haven't earned it yet. And you should be out there doing and shaking and baking.
But with 25 more summers, I wanna feel each one of them. I wanna be like, "Woo, this year. Woo. This was slow." It's like, "I didn't do much of anything. Did I accomplish anything? I got bored. I read another book. Ugh, it took forever…"
I want these last 25 summers to feel long and purposeful and mine. Not because I've given that time away and I've looked up and it's all gone. I've given it all away to everybody else. And I don't even know what was left for me. And so I think all of that is a part of thinking about death.
On the thing her mom told her at the end of her life that stuck with her.
Obama: The last year of my mom's life, she was sick. Her body was just shutting down for a number of various reasons. And her last bout of illness, she was with me in Hawaii, in our home in Hawaii, which was a blessing, right? Because she was forced to let me take care of her.
Martin: She didn't want to be a burden.
Obama: She didn't want to be a burden. And ooh, I had doctors and nurses and everybody coming in and we had her diet and I was bossing her around and she was mad and she was, "I just wanna go home."
And I was like, "But you can't, you're stuck with me." I could just take care of her. And she got better and went back to Chicago.
But we were sitting on the couch watching one of her court shows 'cause she liked court shows. And she was realizing that, you know, she will not ever be the same old self that she was. She was starting to realize she's coming to the end. And this woman that prepared me for death and talked to me about all this stuff and was like, "I'm ready to die — old people are around too long, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah," she leaned over to me and she said, "Wow, this went fast." And I held her hand, I said, "What are you talking about?" And she said, "Life." She said, "This went fast." And this was the woman who was ready.
And what that told me was that even when you tell yourself you're ready, if you're living a good life, you are never really ready for it to end, right? So I hope I feel that way, even though I will be ready for it, because it's been good and purposeful, that I'll feel like, "Sh– I wish I had more time." So I'm trying to live my life like that, you know?
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