Former first lady Michelle Obama has admitted that she is ‘dealing with some form of low-grade depression’ because of the pandemic, racial strife — and the ‘hypocrisy’ of the Trump administration.
The 56-year-old uploaded episode two of ‘The Michelle Obama Podcast’ on Spotify today, featuring a discussion with NPR’s Michele Norris.
The Daily Mail: During the conversation, Michelle gets candid about her ’emotional highs and lows,’ specifically calling out how ‘exhausting’ and ‘dispiriting’ it is to watch how the President responds — or doesn’t respond at all — to ‘yet another story’ of a black man or person being hurt or killed.
She said she is battling some form of depression ‘not just because of the quarantine, but because of the racial strife, and just seeing this administration, watching the hypocrisy of it, day in and day out, is dispiriting.
‘I don’t think I’m unusual, in that,’ she added. ‘But I’d be remiss to say that part of this depression is also a result of what we’re seeing in terms of the protests, the continued racial unrest, that has plagued this country since its birth.
‘I have to say that waking up to the news, waking up to how this administration has or has not responded, waking up to yet another story of a black man or a black person somehow being dehumanized, or hurt or killed, or falsely accused of something, it is exhausting.
‘And it has led to a weight that I haven’t felt in my life, in a while.’
But she added ‘spirit is lifted’ when she feels healthy and surrounds herself with good people, like family and friends.
‘I reach out to my family, and to my friends, even in this time of quarantine. You know, I fought to continue to find a way to stay connected to the people in my life who bring me joy, and my girlfriends, my husband, my kids,’ she said.
‘I’m waking up in the middle of the night, ’cause I’m worrying about something or there’s a heaviness,’ she said.
‘I try to make sure I get a workout in, although there have been periods throughout this quarantine, where I just have felt too low.
‘You know, I’ve gone through those emotional highs and lows that I think everybody feels, where you just don’t feel yourself, and sometimes there’s been a week or so where I had to surrender to that, and not be so hard on myself. And say, “You know what? You’re just not feeling that treadmill right now.”
‘You have to recognize that you’re in a place, a bad place, in order to get out of it. So you kinda have to sit in it for a minute, to know, oh, oh, I’m feeling off. So now I gotta, I gotta feed myself with something better,’ she added.
