Michelle Obama addresses not attending Trump’s inauguration, the importance of saying “no”

Former first lady Michelle Obama said her decision to skip President Trump’s inauguration in January was her making a choice that was right for herself, a practice she said she’s trying to be better at. 

In a conversation with actor Taraji P. Henson on her podcast, “IMO,” which she hosts with her brother, Craig Robinson, Obama said she has been working on feeling comfortable saying “no” and that she has “done enough,” with the help of therapy.

“My decision to skip the inauguration, … or my decision to make choices at the beginning of this year that suited me, were met with such ridicule and criticism, like people couldn’t believe that I was saying ‘no’ for any other reason that they had to assume that my marriage was falling apart,” Obama said. 

Unfounded rumors swirled online after Obama was absent from the inauguration as well as former President Jimmy Carter’s funeral. 

The decision wasn’t easy for her, she said.

“It took everything in my power to not do the thing that was right, or that was perceived as right, but do the thing that was right for me, that was a hard thing for me to do,” Obama said. “I had to basically trick myself out of it, and it started with not having anything to wear.”

“I walk around with the right dress, I travel with clothes just in case something pops off,” she explained. “So I was like, if I’m not going to do this thing, I gotta tell my team, I don’t even want to have a dress ready, right? Because it’s so easy to just say, ‘let me do the right thing.'”

Henson commended Obama for her choice, saying if she doesn’t make choices for herself, she becomes “a shock absorber.”

“And that’s what women are. We’re shock absorbers, and that’s exhausting and it’s not healthy,” Henson said. “You’ve had to be shock absorbers for your husband, for your children, for your mom, for your family, your loved ones because of where you were sitting in the public eye. That’s not fair to you. When do you ever get to live for you?”

Obama said she’s still working on doing things solely for herself, but wants to set an example for her daughters, Malia, 26, and Sasha, 23, and others.

“If I, after all that I’ve done in this world, if I’m still showing them that I have to keep — I still have to show people that I love my country, that I’m doing the right thing, that I’m always setting, going high all the time even in the face of a lot of hypocrisy and contradiction, right? All I’m doing is keeping that crazy bar that our mothers and grandmothers set for us,” she said. 

She hopes to teach them to “start practicing” saying “no” earlier than she did. “So you build that muscle,” she said. 

“People can handle ‘no,'” she added. “The world doesn’t stop because I said no to your event.”