Michelle Obama

find ways to adapt. If you’re in it forever, there’s really no choice.

You find ways to adapt. If you’re in it forever, there’s really no choice.

hoped to be exactly like my own mother and at the same time nothing like her at all.

Ultimately, though, like so many things, it was a matter of perception—how we decided to look at what was in front of us.

were me, as I’d once been. And I was them, as they could be.

I felt sometimes like a swan on a lake, knowing that my job was in part to glide and appear serene, while underwater I never stopped pedaling

Grief and resilience live together.

me, becoming isn’t about arriving somewhere or achieving a certain aim. I see it instead as forward motion, a means of evolving, a way to reach continuously toward a better self.

Everyone on earth, they’d tell us, was carrying around an unseen history, and that alone deserved some tolerance.

I was probably no better than her other students, no less fumbling, but I was driven. To me, there was magic in the learning. I got a buzzy sort of satisfaction from it