"We Can't Be Who We Can't See" with Michele Norris

The Light Podcast is presented by Starbucks and Intuit.

I am so happy to be here.

One of the things we love about Michelle Obama is that she brings people together.

And we are all here together looking sparkly and happy

because we are here to spend an evening with our forever First Lady. So let us wait no further.
Let us bring her out here, and let's show her a big, huge, warm welcome from my sister friend, Michelle Obama. Hi, everyone.
It's Michelle. It's been a while since this podcast first came out.
A whole year, actually. And a lot has happened since then for all of us.
We've had good days and bad days and lots of good and bad days. We felt fear and anxiety, but also community and love.
In other words, we've lived a whole lot of life. And what I keep hearing from people I meet is that they're still looking for new and creative ways to manage everything life throws their way.
now I don't have all the answers. Believe me, if I did, I'd tell you.
But I do know what is working for me, and I hope that some of it will work for you, too. That's why I wrote The Light We Carry, and that's why I'm thrilled to announce that it will be coming out in paperback soon.
And to help celebrate, I'm also releasing a couple of bonus episodes of this podcast that I've never shared before, including this one with my dear friend, Michelle Norris. Michelle is also a world-class journalist, author of the new New York Times bestselling book, Our Hidden Conversations, and host of the wonderful podcast, Your Mama's Kitchen, which you can find on Audible or wherever you get your podcasts.
With Michelle, I never have to look or feel or act a certain way. I can just be myself.
In this episode, we talk about friendship, mentorship, relationships, and so much more.

I hope you can feel the love and that you have as much fun listening as we did recording it.

I love that you use the phrase partnering well, because you're not talking necessarily

about marrying well, about finding a partner in life. you you talk about it not being 50 50 and that marriage is never 50 50 which is you know information that i think many of us need to hear because you go into it thinking eeny meeny miny moe paper scissors rock you know we're gonna you do one thing i do one thing it's always gonna be fair no it's not we need to figure this out sometimes you won't like him.
You know, we're going to... You do one thing, I do one thing.
It's always going to be fair. No, it's not.
We need to figure this out. Sometimes you won't like him.
You know, and that's just... And sometimes you...
You will love him, but you might not like him. That's also one of those little...
Or you might love her or you might not like her. One of those little things we don't say about marriage.
There will be long periods of time when you won't like them. Long, long periods.
Long, long, long. Long periods of long long periods of time you know you come home and you realize it's not going to be 50 50 unless you can and you don't even want it to be 50 50 there was this time I haven't told this story Barack tells it all the time but I went on a business trip.
Malia, Malia was, was, was Sasha born yet? But Malia, Barack was in charge. Malia had to go to ballet.
And I, of course, this is where my kitchen table, because the thing was, is that even when Barack was on his own, he was never on his own. Cause my kitchen table would be like, girl, we got you, you know.
And so he was like, no, I can get her to ballet. So he tries to fix her hair, you know, ballet, the tutu and the little puff.
That's all she had. It was just a poof.
All you had to do was gather, gather and tie, gather and tie. Why can't you do that? You know? And he was, he was like, I don't know what to do with this.
It's like gather and tie, dude, brush, gather, tie, hold it all together. You, you know, you, you play basketball, you're coordinated, you know, you can do all these things.
You talk, give speeches, you can't gather and tie a poof. So he, he, he does the best he can and he finishes and Malia's old enough to talk, and this is so Malia.
Malia, he looks at her and he says, you know, how is it? And he's like, oh, daddy, this is great. So he takes her to ballet.
She walks into the parent area where my kitchen table girlfriends come over. He sends her over to one of the mothers who says, come here, sweetie.
He overhears this. He says, she asked Malia, you want me to do your hair? And he said, she said, oh, my God, yes, this is a disaster.
More after the break. That's an example, though, of how the kitchen table watches out for each other absolutely one of the things i appreciate is when you have a circle the other people in your life benefit also so my husband has benefited from our friendship our kitchen table because i come home a little more calm but our kids you want us to have our kitchen tables.
Yes, you really do. So we don't go off on you.
And you all should have yours too. Yes.
Men, talk. Make some friends, men.
And when you do, talk about something. How many times do they get together and I come back? They play golf.
They play it's like how's asia and barack is like uh she seems fine i talked to you and it's like well this happened and that happened i was like what are y'all talking about if you're not even talking about kids have some friends and talk about something can you guys get that together it's like Because everyone will benefit from that. But as one of the people who entered the circle later, I had to deal with, I had to decode fear for myself.
In part because, you know, making new friends, you have to make yourself vulnerable. Entering a friendship with Michelle Obama means that you have to move a lot.
And you had these boot camps that you invited us to be a part of and one of the things I didn't tell you I'm telling you first on stage in front of okay what have you been hiding when we first went to boot camp I would go to the little cabin we were at Camp David and we stayed in these cozy little cabins and I would go and I would get under the covers. And I was crying.
Oh, I made my friends cry. Because it was really hard.
And I was like, the phone, the cell service doesn't work up there. Can't tell you where it is.
But the cell service, I was like trying to call home. Come get me.
Aw. You know, can I just walk down the hill? You make my kitchen table sound horrible.
You can meet me at the Wawa. You know you know which is like our 7-eleven in that part of the world can you just come get me and and i got really do you remember the first time i went i got really sick yeah like my and it was my body saying uh-uh you're not making me walk up that hill you can give that hill a name you call the hill bertha it was bertha it was a big hill.
And I thought you were trying to kill me, but what I realized is what friendship will do for you. But you were trying to help me find my best self.
Yes. And that was something that I would not do on your own.
So when we talk about friendship, I raise this because it's not always daisies and, you know, Chardonnay. You know, sometimes your friends, although Chardonnay does, you know, make things go down easier sometimes, but your friends also tell you what you need to hear and they push you.
And so I appreciate that because what you did for the nation and pushing us to get moving, you pushed your friends to get moving also. And I am certain that it has added years to my life and i'm certain that it is well you went from crying in the cabin to now you have a trainer and how many days a week do you work out two and you play tennis three times a week and so here's what i know about friendship it is it's a thing especially we as women, we aren't used to pushing ourselves.

I think the next generation behind us, now that being a female athlete is now a cool thing.

It wasn't when we were growing up.

There are more opportunities for girls to play sports.

There's a whole generation of us where we weren't encouraged to use our bodies to sweat. Oh no, they used to call it glowing.
Yeah. Right.
We didn't sweat. We glowed.
Right. You were trying to get out of physical fitness, right? Because being a strong athletic girl, it wasn't cool.
Maybe you could be a cheerleader, but there were no role models for girls. There were no Serenas, right? There was no WNBA.
And so as a result, our generation of women, we don't know what it feels like to physically push ourselves. And I think we missed something because of that.
We're intimidated by physical fitness in a way that shouldn't. And so what our boot camps were is they were a series of, it was hard.
It was three workouts a day. It was really hard.
There was a trainer. We had the Marines.
We'd be boxing. We did a little bit of everything.
We played games. We played dodgeball.
We did relays. You don't want to play dodgeball with Michelle Obama.

Well, everyone was competitive after.

But just playing and running and laughing, it's another thing that gets you out of your worry.

It shuts your brain off because you didn't have time to think about work or worry about the kids

because you were like, there's the workout after lunch.

Can I do it?

And guess what? Everybody did. I want my kitchen table to be alive and healthy.
I want us to understand that we can be smart and strong. I wanted us to model that for our girls because all of us have daughters and all of our daughters move.
All of our daughters eat right. They think about health as part of their way of being.
And I think it's because we modeled that for them. So I'm sorry.
I'm better for it. Oh, it was hard.
It was hard. You talk about opening yourself up to friendship the other thing i will say is is that when you do that you know i we have daughters we have sons i have sons also two sons um but i don't know if you remember this when you first you know you talk about making yourself vulnerable when we first we went to dinner early on at your house and do you remember the time that norris got norris went the house? Do you remember this? He was playing hide and seek.
You mean in the White House? No, we were up in, we were vacationing and you invited us to dinner. And for 15 minutes, he was like missing.
He was hiding. I don't remember that.
And I thought, they're never inviting us back. See, that's the other thing.
It's when your friends are the president, the first lady, you're sweating stuff that we're like, of course they broke it. They don't know what's going on, which is why I'm grateful that people put up with what it was like to make friends with us in the heat of that.
That wasn't an easy feat. But I share all that because it's, if we get back to it as a tool, you know, I would just strongly encourage all of us to prioritize friendship.
It doesn't happen on its own. Um, and it's gotta be up there on the list of things.
And even when you have kids and a relationship, you know, let me tell you, kids are gone before you know it. leave fast too they take up all the oxygen in

your life and then they leave it's like bye I'm done with you now and it happens soon it's like I have Friday I have a party that's like but we we used to spend Friday so I can't be with you any longer this relation they break up with you so fast and take your money and take your money They make you pay for leaving them, for leaving you.

So that's... And take your money.
They still memo you. And take your money.
They make you pay for leaving them.

For leaving you.

So that's going to happen so fast.

And we have so much life left to live.

And we are social beings.

Even though we've gotten used to the comfort of being in our own words, there's a comfort there. You can easily slip into, as much

as I like people, I like being alone. I like when Barack is traveling.
I have the remote to myself.

I, you know, that just sort of feeling of no one is in my space. They're not going to comment on

the fact that I'm watching a third season of The Real Housewives and come in like,

why are you watching that? And I was like, why do you watch ESPN all day? You know, no judgment. It's good not to have judgment.
But you can fall into that trap of comfort, but all the studies show that that's not good for us. And I want our young people not to get in the habit, especially now that you don't have to go to work.
If you're out there and you're finding yourself alone a lot, I want you to resist that being the norm. And that means you've got to take the risk, the scary risk, the fear thing again, of reaching out to somebody, you know, maybe being rejected, learning how to parcel through and get some resilience around friendship so that we're not alone.

And that helps with stress, anxiety, uncertainty.

Just being able to talk to somebody going, don't doesn't this feel crazy these times?

Just having somebody else go, yeah, I'm struggling, too.

That helps. That's a tool for getting through these times.
More after the break. So an observation.
In the years that you were in the White House, you seem to have used that kitchen table metaphor even when you were in the White House to take some of the pressure off, to bring people in for dinners, to, you know, after a rough week, Friday night, Saturday night, let's bring some friends in. Let's invite some people that we, not always friends, sometimes dignitaries, sometimes people whose work you admired.
Am I correct in saying that, that that was part of what you did when you were at the White House also? Our motto in the White House was also, don't make that house so precious. It's the people's house.
But I watched, and I'd been there before as a U.S. senator, and I realized, who comes here? Who gets to come into these hallowed halls? And there'd be statesmen and diplomats and state dinners.
And I'd notice, even as a citizen looking in, what goes on in that house? I didn't want it to be a mystery. I wanted people in that house, particularly kids in that house, kids who would never be invited in that house, but for us being there.
I wanted it filled with music. I wanted there to be trick or treating.
I wanted us to use the South Lawn for sleepovers. So every state dinner that we had, we had kids, we would do a companion tasting for kids who would come in.
They'd be able to see the China. They would learn about the country that was coming.
Kids would be invited to that arrival ceremony so they could sit on the lawn. Because I was like, what does it mean to live in D.C.
and have a state visit? And you don't even know even know what that is why would we do that why wouldn't we have kids from Anacostia and all over just in that house so that they understand what goes on behind those gates we wanted that house to be alive and so yeah we we had people there all the time all the time it was a valuable part of me making sure that the kids I came in contact with felt seen and they felt like a part of this administration, a part of this country, all kids. I'm not surprised to hear you say that because when we first met each other, I was actually covering you on the campaign trail.
You were out in South Carolina campaigning for your husband, who was then a candidate before he was elected to the White House. And we were at this community center.
And I remember that you visited a community center where they had a children's program. And your staff was like, got to go, got to move, got to go, got to move.
And you sat and you spent, you bent down and you talked to every one of those kids. You spent time with every one of those kids.
So when you moved into the White House and you started to fill the White House with children, I was not surprised at all. And I think one of the most profound things you have said repeatedly is, I see myself in you.
That's such a powerful statement because so many children from different kinds of backgrounds have never heard that from someone, someone like you, someone who lived in the White House. We can't be who we can't see.
And, you know, that has been said in so many ways. And yeah, it meant a lot.
We ran all eight years off camera, nothing that we publicized. We did a mentorship program for kids.
And by mentorship, we did leadership programs. But this was a very intimate internship program because I felt like this house needed to have a relationship with the kids in the immediate vicinity, right in Anacostia, right in Northeast, the kids right in the backyard of the White House.
And I wanted to have a meaningful long-term commitment because the other thing I realized about kids when they interact with famous people, you interact once and then you never see them again. And I always wonder, what does that do? You know, especially when we show up, we shut down streets.
It's a big deal. There's press, there's lights, cameras.
I feel like apologizing going, I don't want you to feel used by this. And when you show up once, it feels like you're using kids.
And I never wanted kids to feel used. So any interaction I had at a school or with a set of kids, the goal was we have to touch these kids at least three times.
They can't just show up for a photo op. That may mean they get invited back for a music event or they'll come and do something in the garden or I'll go to the school or invite them back for lunch or a conversation.
Because I want kids to know this wasn't just a one-time thing. This wasn't just some important people coming through your life.
You were gonna be engaged, and the mentorship program was a way we could drill down. So we picked kids in the local area, diverse group of kids.
We didn't pick the top students. We didn't pick the worst students.
We picked the kids that were just right there, kind of lost. They weren't bad enough to be trouble and weren't good enough to be excellent, but still capable.
And we brought them in once a month. They were paired with somebody senior in the administration.
For the girls, it was the executive chef. She was a mentor.
Valerie Jarrett was a mentor.

Everyone from the top down.

And everyone was assigned a girl, but the girls would come every week.

And the first time the girls would come, the way they would come into the house, they were, of course, shy, quiet.

They'd meet with me at first, and they could barely look me in the eye.

And my whole goal was, by the time you finish, you're going to feel like you own this place. Because if you can walk into the White House, be here every week, feel like this place is for you, you can do anything.
So they'd come in as sophomores, barely look at me in the eye, right? But after coming for years, month after month, and then we would do a graduation program, the transformation would just be amazing. All these girls would come in with their parents.
Oh, this is Michelle Obama. I talk to her all the time.
Who I really want you to meet is blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And this is the dip room.
And this is where we did this exercise. Their chest would just come out, right? That's what seeing a kid can do.
You know, it is as simple as that. Now, I can't say that all these kids went on to be president, but they will remember that.
You don't forget when somebody tries to lower your bar, especially when you're young, you remember the people who doubt you. You remember the negative energy.
You know when you're not being seen. You know when you're not being valued.
And when you don't get that light, you misbehave in the darkness. And when we look around at kids, any kids anywhere in the world who are stealing, doping, drugging, ganging, those are kids who are not seen.
And so I use my platform as much as possible so that they have something good to remember. They can say that Barack Obama saw me.
Barack Obama allowed me to sit in his house and talk to me like a real person again and again and again. We can all do that for a kid in our life, but we also can do the damage.
So we have to be careful about how we interact with kids, the assumptions we make

about them. If they walk into a store and you accuse them of not belonging, you follow them, you call them out for selling lemonade, you Karenize them.
I don't want to be, but when that happens to a kid, they do not forget it. And it damages them.
Our duty is to use our light to shine it on kids so that they don't have to seek out attention in the dark. I have one last question.
Yes, ma'am. And it's sad to get to the end of the road, but what does it mean to you to be back with people who are so eager to hear your message and to sop up all the wisdom in your book? What does it mean to you? This is the air I breathe too, because I am a people person and I don't get to be in the world normally anymore.
That was a trade-off, you know, and I'm not complaining because we were able to do some good stuff in the world, but I no longer have the luxury of anonymity. You know, I can't just sit and listen over your conversations and figure out what, what'd you say in the grocery store? You know, you're to see me, and then you're going to stop talking and go,

is that Michelle Obama?

It's like, no, I'm just trying to hear about your marriage.

Just pretend like I'm not here.

Just trying to figure out where things are.

At my heart, I am a sociologist.

That was my major.

I love people.

I love the study.

I am fascinated with y'all.

But selfishly, it's like these rooms keep me hopeful. And I hope they keep you hopeful.
I mean, one of the things I said in my book is that, you know, I think these rooms are sort of about me, but I think they're more about us and what we crave. When you leave here, you guys are going to feel better about yourselves and each other because this is what America is.
I've been out there. It's not what we read on the news.
That's a business, right? And this does not diminish how hard things are right now. People are struggling and we need to be doing more to provide support, mental health support, health care support, jobs.
We need to figure out what we're doing. And as jobs are being eliminated because of technology, the planet is getting warmer.

There are lots of problems.

Our young people are experiencing record levels of technology. The planet is getting warmer.
There are lots of problems. Our young people are experiencing record levels of anxiety.
So this is not to whitewash the reality of things. But America is full of decent people.
And right now, because of those uncertainties, we just are acting outside of ourselves. But that's not who we are.
This is who we are, regardless of party. Because as first, as the first black first lady of the United States, people, people have always been decent to us, across the board but the vast majority of people were willing to open their hearts to this new thing this black family in america running the country and go huh i see myself yeah that makes sense i get it i didn't know that that's who they were.
And people's hearts can open more. That's why we can't be afraid of each other.
Because there's really nothing to fear. You know, we're all just trying to get to the same place.
I hope these rooms remind you and make you as hopeful as they make me. And we got to hold on to these feelings, right? And we've got to look for leaders who want to lead in this way.
I don't care what

party, but we should demand more hopeful leadership. We deserve it and our kids deserve it.

Thank you so much. Amen.
Sometimes when you're in it, when you're living life and feeling overwhelmed, it can be easy to forget that you're not alone. It can be hard to remember that other people may be feeling the same way you are and that there are folks out there who might be able to help or at least relate.
In those moments, you might not know you need them. You might not even think you need them, but we all need people who compliment us.
And I don't mean those who just say nice things. I mean people who fill a part of us we didn't even know was empty.
People who lift us up when we're down, who get us out of that fog when we didn't even know we were in it. It can just be one person, a friend who sees us for who we are, who can help us become who we want to be.

This year, I hope you find a new friend, a new mentor, a partner, or a peer who compliments you.

And I hope they bring a little more light into your life, just like Michelle does for me.

Because you deserve it. We all do.

Thanks for listening.

I'll see you next time.

If you want to hear more from Michelle, check out Your Mama's Kitchen on Audible or wherever you listen to podcasts.

And if you want to keep the conversation going with me, pre-order the paperback edition of The Light We Carry online, or even better, at your favorite local bookstore. This has been a Higher Ground and Audible Original.
Produced by Higher Ground and Little Everywhere. Executive produced by Dan Fearman and Mukta Mohan for Higher Ground and Jane Marie for Little Everywhere.
Audible Executive Producers are Kate Naven and Nick D'Angelo. Audible Co-Producers Keith Wooten and Glyn Pogue.
Produced by Mike Richter. With additional production by Joy Sanford, Dan Gallucci, and Nancy Golombiski.
With production support from Andrew Eapin, Francesca Diaz, Camila Thurdacous, and Ryan Thank you. The theme song is Unstoppable by Sia.
The closing song is Lovely Day by Bill Withers. Copyright 2023 by Higher Ground Audio, LLC.

Sound recording copyright 2023 by Higher Ground Audio, LLC.

Voice over by Novena Carmel.

This episode was recorded live at the Masonic in San Francisco. Thank you.