Almost four years after her memoir, Becoming, Michelle Obama is once again giving readers insight into her life. In The Light We Carry, Obama shares practical tips and wisdom about everything from overcoming fear to how exactly you can “go high”.
Peppered among the advice – from Obama herself and vicariously from family members, friends and colleagues – are stories about her life.
Here are five things we’ve learned about the former first lady.
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She took up knitting during the pandemic
Obama was “never one for hobbies”, she writes in the first chapter of The Light We Carry, but during the pandemic she found herself ordering a pair of knitting needles online. Knitting was “buried” in her DNA, as she is “the descendant of many seamstresses”.
“This was less about passion and more about practicality; sewing was a simple hedge against falling into poverty,” she writes.
With the pandemic stripping away the structure of her days and feeling like it was “harder to access my own hope or to feel like I could make an actual difference” because of Donald Trump’s handling of the pandemic, Obama says she was “in a low place when I finally got around to picking up the two beginner-sized needles I’d ordered online”.
Learning to knit via YouTube videos, Obama discovered knitting narrowed her focus and allowed “my hands to drive the car for a while”.
Obama began knitting while speaking on the phone, in Zoom meetings and while watching the news. Among the things she made was a “soft crewneck sweater you give to your Hawaiian-born husband who gets chilled easily in winter”.
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She and Barack have never been ‘everything’ to each other
Obama says in her book that people often approach her “seeking relationship advice”, asking how she and the former president have “managed to stay both married and unmiserable for 30 years now”.
Obama says she does not “have the answers”, but one thing she touches on in the book is how she and her husband “have never tried to be each other’s ‘everything’ in life – to single-handedly shoulder the entire load of care that each of us requires”.
Instead, writes Obama, the pair “distribute the load” and are “carried by a wide array of friendships”.
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The Obamas have their own version of the Olympics
A few years into the presidency, Obama organised a surprise birthday trip for the president, inviting 10 of his “guy friends to Camp David for a weekend to celebrate and have some fun”.
The trip saw Barack Obama “unplug” with his friends, who all “hurled themselves into every activity Camp David had to offer”.
“They played basketball,” writes Obama. “They played cards and threw darts. They did some skeet shooting. They bowled. They had a home-run derby and a football toss.
“They kept score on every last thing, trash-talking their way through each event, boisterously reviewing various plays and upsets late into the night.”
The gathering would soon become known as “campathlon”, and is now an annual gathering the Obamas host on Martha’s Vineyard, which “has grown to include trophies and an opening ceremony”.
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Even Michelle Obama has been cheated on
Let’s first make clear: not by Barack Obama.
But prior to meeting Barack, Obama had dated “men who were less sure of themselves and what they wanted”.
Among them was a “player or two”, men she describes as “nice to look at and exciting to be around, but who were often peering over my shoulder, trying to see who else was in a room, what further connections could be made”.
Obama says that she had been “cheated on and lied to a few times” by “early loves”. So Barack, who was “direct and clear about what he wanted”, was different from anyone she had known before.
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Her height often made her feel self-conscious
Obama writes that many of her early memories of feeling different were connected to her height (she is 5ft 11in). She “showed up tall for the first day of kindergarten and grew steadily from there”.
“The attention given to my height brought about a new self-consciousness in me, a slight sense of otherness,” she writes.
It was her father’s advice – that “no one can make you feel bad if you feel good about yourself” – that helped Obama to overcome her uncertainty around her height, and about other spaces where she felt she stood out for various reasons.
The Light We Carry by Michelle Obama is published by Viking (£25). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
