'That's What We Women Struggle With...': Michelle Speaks Her Heart Out Amid Divorce Rumours with Barack Obama

New Delhi: Michelle Obama, former US First Lady has finally broken the silence on divorce rumours about her and Barack Obama, which have been circulating for a few months now.

Michelle has spoken at length, about the speculations and scrutiny around her personal life and the struggles that women have to face when they take decisions for themselves.

Michelle Obama Dismisses Divorce Rumours with Barack Obama

Shutting down the rumours of divorce with Barack Obama, Michelle Obama has explained the reason behind avoiding public events and how it was wrongly seen as a reflection of her marriage. While speaking at ‘Work in Progress’ podcast with Sophia Bush, Michelle said that her newfound independence has been mistaken as a rocky marriage while on the contrary, it has nothing to do with her married life.

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She said that people found it hard to believe that “a grown woman was just making a set of decisions for herself” and labelled it as a by-product of a supposed rocky marriage.

‘And That’s What We Women Struggle With…'

Calling out people for judging her and her personal life on the basis of the decisions she made for herself, to prioritise herself in a long time, the former US First Lady said that women often struggle when they say no to things. A New York Post article quoted her as saying, “The interesting thing is that, when I say ‘no,’ for the most part people are like, ‘I get it, and I’m OK. And that’s the thing that we as women struggle with — disappointing people.”

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Michelle Obama Blames Society for Stereotyping People and Their Decisions

She further said in the podcast, “So much so that people, they couldn’t even fathom that I was making a choice for myself, that they had to assume that my husband and I are divorcing. But that’s what society does to us. We actually finally start going, ‘What am I doing? Who am I doing this for?’ And if it doesn’t fit into the sort of stereotype of what people think we should do, then it gets labeled as something negative and horrible.”

On taking control of her life away from the White House and taking “some big girl decisions and owning it fully”, Michelle Obama said, “I get to look at my calendar, which I did this year. It was a real big example of me, myself, looking at something that I was supposed to do, you know, without naming names, and I chose to do what was best for me. Not what I had to do, not what other people wanted me to do, and between you and me, that was an important test for me just as a woman, as an independent person. Because, like all women, I operate from guilt.”

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“Now is the time for me to start asking myself these hard questions of, ‘Who do I truly want to be every day?’ And that changes. So, who do I want to have a lunch with? How long do I want to stay in a place? Do I want to travel? If a girlfriend calls and says, ‘Let’s go here,’ I can say ‘Yes!’ I can. And I’m trying to do that more and more. So what does it look like? It looks like whatever I want it to look like. And I still find time to give speeches, to be out there in the world, to work on projects. I still care about girls’ education", she added.