Tyler Perry:

Can I ask you, were you high at the time?

Michelle Obama:

Unfortunately, I had to get through all of that sober. But the depression started when the election happened because as you all remember, Barack and I campaigned really hard, not just for the candidate we supported, but we understood. I said this at the convention speech. I said it over and over again. The presidency isn't a thing to play with. It matters who is at the top, and regardless of party, because there are competent people in all parties. And we've been through... You can disagree with somebody, and still the country will function. But it felt like people were complacent and sort of thought it was a joke in a way that hurt, after all that we put into it and all that we had to put into it, the bar that we had to live under where a tan suit was a scandal, where a fist bump was deemed to be terroristic. Ooh, don't get me started.

Tyler Perry:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Michelle Obama:

Going back there. But it hurt because...

Tyler Perry:

Because you had such a high bar, or standard.

Michelle Obama:

Well, and also felt like there were people who voted for who they chose, but there were also many of us who didn't vote at all. And it felt like a direct rebuke. It felt like, yes, we can turned into yeah, whatever. And we felt like we showed up for the country. And so, showing up for us means showing up for every election forever and ever, amen. The disappointment came in the people who just didn't bother because they didn't quite know why it didn't work. Things weren't working out. They didn't know that it would matter. And Barack was concerned about the very thing that happened, which was a pandemic. Because if you read science and you read your briefings...

Tyler Perry:

Or if you just read.

Michelle Obama:

If you just read, but particularly if you are the president... The president has access to information. And it was clear that we were due for a major pandemic. We had had many under President Obama. Ebola was a pandemic that led to one case in the United States, one case. So a blueprint was made for how to deal with the circumstance, a blueprint that was not read or taken seriously. So when a pandemic hit, as Barack said, he was like, you can play around with being a fake president when the country is just running well, but when there's a real crisis, that's when it becomes dangerous. So I was depressed from the very beginning because I knew what was coming, and to see it unfold as quickly as it did, it was just sad.

Tyler Perry:

You knew what was coming. Did you know January 6th was coming?

Michelle Obama:

That I did not, no. It just proves to us that for some people it will never be enough. You were never enough, and we deal with that. At some point, are we not enough? We go to the best schools. We work hard. We don't make mistakes because we can't make mistakes. We are a faith-based couple, raising good kids, doing the best we can, working as hard as we can. And do we know how this feels when you show up, and you think that you are showing up right actually will matter, and you realize for some it never will. And yes, that took me into a depression.

Tyler Perry:

I could see why. You about the low grade depression, the things you were going through at the time. So you started writing The Light We Carry. You chose to call it The Light We Carry because you believe that everybody carries a light. But after seeing all that, I want to just ask you, do you believe that everybody carries? Everybody?

Michelle Obama:

Everybody.

Tyler Perry:

Everybody??

Michelle Obama:

All God's children.

Tyler Perry:

All God children got a light??

Michelle Obama:

Yes, Tyler, I do believe.

Tyler Perry:

Because, see, I–

Michelle Obama:

No, truthfully.

Tyler Perry:

No, no. I believe everybody got a socket, but I don't know if they actually have a light.

Michelle Obama:

Everybody got a light.

Tyler Perry:

So you believe we all got a light. Let's talk about that, shall we?

Michelle Obama:

Everybody got a light. They do. And you can't start looking for the light when they're grown and already broken. Where the light is for all of us is when we're born, we are all born... I don't care what race, what political background, what part of the planet we are on. If a child, if you've held a baby of any kind, you know they come with a light. They come with this beautiful openness, all of them. All of them. And what happens to them, if they're lucky, they are blessed, and that light is fueled. It's fueled with love, investment, opportunity. But for too many of us, that light is snuffed out, and it's snuffed out by neglect and abuse and disinvestment. We see it. And for those who are exhibiting a lack of light as an adult, the ones we question, this is where empathy comes in. For me, I have to think, what happened to you? What happened to you over the course of your life that you are that bitter or greedy or selfish or lacking in compassion or unable to see beyond your own fear. Something happens to kids to get them to that place where they, as adults, do not have light or can't find it. But we all have it, and I think part of what we have to do is find it in ourselves, to start. Because you can't give what you don't have, and you can't count on other people to give you your life.

Tyler Perry:

That's right.

Michelle Obama:

Particularly those of us who are others or different in the world, where we don't see ourselves, where we feel invisible. And this is what I try to tell kids, you can't wait for people to see you because many people aren't even looking for you. They don't even know you exist. And this is so true. There are people... When I went to Princeton, I realized that was the first place I had been to, really, where there were so many wealthy white people in a whole wealthy white town. I was like, you all don't even know I exist. Because when you're privileged, you can live in your sameness for your entire life, never even realizing that there's some black kid on the south side who has a lot of potential but doesn't go to a great school or doesn't have parents that have what it takes or maybe doesn't have parents or all. They don't even understand why a kid would carjack and spend time in mayhem and criminality because they don't even realize there are schools where kids don't get to paint. They don't have access to instruments. Nobody is nurturing them. They can't even fathom that. So they think that when kids are bad, they're just bad kids. That's what I learned. There are people who will not see you. So when I talked to kids, I was like, you don't have time to sit and bemoan the fact of your invisibility because these people don't even know you exist. So you have to start seeing yourself. You have to start finding ways to seek the light out from people who will see your light.

Tyler Perry:

And that's so powerful because I remember many, many times being in situations where I realized, wait a minute, these people, they're not bad people. They're just not aware. They have no–

Michelle Obama:

Don't have a clue.

Tyler Perry:

-idea of your life, of your existence.

Michelle Obama:

Don't have a clue.

Tyler Perry:

You're not even on the radar. Sometimes we're talking about white privilege, they don't even know what that is or what that means. They're not even paying attention to it.

Michelle Obama:

Well, and that's why it's angering to hear it, right?

Tyler Perry:

Yes, yes.

Michelle Obama:

Because there are a whole bunch of white folks who are struggling, don't have privilege, who are unemployed, who are living in a state of inequity and unfairness, and to have that broad brush them, that rubs in the wrong way because it's like, “what you mean privilege?” Because sometimes we don't even see them.

Tyler Perry:

That's exactly right.

Michelle Obama:

And we don't know that there are white folks who are... And maybe they don't even know they got it as bad as we do.

Tyler Perry:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Michelle Obama:

It's like, you voting for the wrong people.

Tyler Perry:

Yeah.

Michelle Obama:

Because they don't know you. They don't know your story. I think we have to be open to the fact that we all have that light. That's to me, what empathy is. That is the core of a sane society, is that we all work on our own empathy so that we are not just victims of our circumstance, and we can open up to the possibility and pain of the others around us. Because if we can stand in somebody else's shoes like we would want them to stand in ours, as I say, it's harder to hate up close. It's harder to hate when you are seeing the hurt rather than the anger.

Tyler Perry:

When you can understand it.

Michelle Obama:

When you get understanding. So if you want to be seen, you also have to see. You have to be willing to see others as well.

Michelle Obama:

In the audience that night, we had a very special guest.

Caroline Edwards:

Hi, I'm Officer Caroline Edwards. I'm from Atlanta, Georgia, and I'm here with my mom and my sister.

Michelle Obama:

You might remember her powerful testimony before the January 6th Committee. She was one of the first officers at the Capitol that day. What I admire about Officer Edwards is not just her bravery, but her empathy and her sense of duty, the way that she wanted to be there, not just for her country, but for her teammates and the people she cared about.

Caroline Edwards:

I've asked myself over and over again what made me get up that day. I should have just gone to the hospital and gone home and called it a day. And I would love for the answer to be because I want to defend democracy. In reality, it was because of the person to the left and to the right of me. We get our strength from other people. We talk about the things that we fight for, and that's all well and good. Of course we fight for justice. But what we're really saying is, I'm fighting for another person.

Michelle Obama:

I am so grateful to Officer Edwards for joining us that night and sharing her story.

Tyler Perry:

You talk about, and I love this quote, you say, "When equilibrium is impossible, we are challenged to evolve." Now explain that.

Michelle Obama:

The only thing in life that is guaranteed is uncertainty. I don't mean that as a complete downer. Life is unfair. It is unjust. It is not equal. And so we have to kind of stop fighting that and start figuring out, well, what are our tools to exist in the realities of the world as it is? That's just the state of humanity, and particularly it feels like in these times... And I don't want to go after one generation, and I think we are part of raising a generation of kids who believe they deserve happiness and that life is fair. Everybody wins. We protect our kids against feeling pain. We don't want them to lose. We don't want them to feel failure. We treat their anxiety like, oh my God, you're anxious. I mean, I told you the story of Sasha going to this fancy school when she was before middle school. She was like, "Mom, I'm having anxiety." And I'm thinking...

Tyler Perry:

Where you learned that word?

Michelle Obama:

Wait, wait, where you even learned that word? And of course, as the First Lady, I'm waiting for my kids to be messed up. So I'm like, what? Anxiety? Let's sit down. Let me unpack this. Well, what it turned out was that she feels anxious when she doesn't do her homework and it's late. And I was like, oh, that's not an issue that requires medical care or any attention. You just need to be more organized and not procrastinate. You're supposed to feel that anxiety. That anxiety is supposed to wake your little behind up, so we're not going to label that as an issue. But the instinct of a parent is, my child is feeling a way, and how can I fix it? And I don't want them to... And then we create kids who don't know how to deal with stress, anxiety. And let me, just as a caveat, say there are kids who are dealing with real mental health issues, so I am not talking about that. And we want to encourage our kids to get mental health support. We want to pay attention to that, black people in particular.

Tyler Perry:

Yes, yes, yes.

Michelle Obama:

Therapy, counseling, all of that, we cannot pretend like that's not real. Mental health is a part of our physical health. It is a challenge that we have to take seriously, but we also can't over-correct. We still have to prepare ourselves and our kids for the world as it is. And so, uncertainty is a part of that. And why Covid and quarantine really got to many of us was that so many of us felt that uncertainty. All of us felt the uncertainty that many people live with. If you are poor, homeless, you don't have prospects for a job. Your mother's on crack. You live in sub-Saharan somewhere where there's not enough food. I mean, this is how the majority of the world lives, y'all. People grow up in immense uncertainty where the weather can end their lives. A drought will render their crops unusable, and there is their year. That's the world, y'all. So we got to learn how to deal with that and develop some tools to not crumble when it happens, but to find ways to keep ourselves elevated. And that's why when we are out of sync, we can either view that as, oh man, I messed up. I can't get out of bed. Or, that's the time you can change and grow and develop another skin that can get you through the next. So that's turning those despites, those challenges into that rocket fuel that can keep you going. And that's one of the tools I learned being the daughter of a blue collar worker black man with MS. I mean, my father had every reason to be depressed, to not get up and go to work. When you grow up with a parent with a disability, I realized I really grew up with more uncertainty than I wanted to own.

And probably for me and my brother, we were watchful, in ways. We were always on guard. We knew we had to have our stuff together in ways that uncertainty required you to be. We had a different skin that we had to develop to live with joy and happiness that was all there. But my father showed me what it meant to turn that handicap, that disability into a superpower because my father never complained. He could have quit his job and been on benefits. Went to work every day until the day he had to be taken to the hospital because he was about to die when I was in my twenties. He worked, put on that uniform, and he went to work. He went to every game. He fathered us. He loved us. He provided for us despite his challenges, despite the uncertainty.

Michelle Obama:

Hey everybody, I just want to make sure we recognize that it might be difficult for some of you to hear parts of Tyler's story. Please take care of yourself while listening.

Tyler Perry:

That's the measure of a true man. And when I think about... You talk about your childhood, and you talk about your father, you talk about your mother just so clearly in the book. I think about my own childhood. This moment actually brought me to tears as I was reading the book. You were talking about your childhood and the love and support, and there's a line where you say, "I was never abused." Which, I stop for a second. I go, "Wait up, whoa. A black woman that wasn't abused." For me, growing up, from the time I was a child to maybe 11 or 12 on, those early years, I did not know one black woman, not one that wasn't abused. My aunt had a PhD, her masters, she had everything. She would come home to a man who would abuse her. And when I saw that, I thought there was a place in the world where a little black girl was nurtured and had all the support from her mother and father. That made me feel so great to know during that time. So now as a parent with a young boy and trying to teach him to be the best man that he can, and trying to keep him out of the spotlight and keep him on the straight narrow, I think about all of the people that came before me and what I would want him to be, how I want him to show up in the world. So, listening to you, watching what you were able to do with your daughters inside of the biggest fishbowl in the world is just fascinating to me, and I just want to congratulate you on that. It's really, really wonderful.

Michelle Obama:

And I don't know if you're comfortable sharing the story of... because Tyler is an amazing father. He really is, and for a black man, because there are a lot of black men who haven't been fathered. And I know many of them are afraid of whether they can give what they didn't have. Barack, my own husband, struggled. He didn't know his father. And I know that he didn't approach fatherhood tentatively, but he was very deliberate. There was a deliberateness in him because he didn't want to be the fathers he had seen. And I want to know if you'd talk a bit about how you manage to do that, because I think there are a lot of young black men out here who need to hear that.

Tyler Perry:

For me, I tell you what happened was I realized I didn't have an example. My father would beat the hell out of me every chance he got. He said how awful I was, what a terrible person I was. I was jackass every day of my life. That's what I heard all the time. But one day... Being a writer helped me to find my catharsis in a lot of things. And so, all the things that my father was doing, I realized he was teaching me how to be a father, just in reverse. So if I did the opposite of everything he did, I had my answers.

Michelle Obama:

Yes. Yes.

Tyler Perry:

You talk in the book about learning how to not see yourself in somebody else's mirror, and mirrors show a reverse image. That was one of the things that changed it for me, and I thank you for asking me about that. It's really important.

Michelle Obama:

But I want to stop there because that is a tool, and many of us haven't had what we are trying to achieve. But I mean, there is that strategy of reversing the dynamic. You learn even in abuse and neglect, and it doesn't even have to be that for... So many of us don't like the way we were parented. We can now look back at our mothers and fathers and the people in our lives and think of the things that you would do differently. But that's an opportunity to learn, too. You don't have to repeat what you see, but it takes a level of conscientiousness to do that. You were talking about, you reprimanded your son when he was talking back to an elder, and I love that story.

Tyler Perry:

Yeah. Okay, I'll tell you about it. I walk in the room, and we have a nanny who was helping us out, and he's just giving her the business. He didn't want to brush his teeth. He's about five or six then, and he didn't want to brush his teeth, and he just acted... And he didn't know I was in the door. I sent Gelila a text and I said, “Come to the door.” I stood in the door and I watched him for a minute, and then I had the nanny leave. And I got down eye to eye, and I was talking to him, and I said, "Listen to me. You are not going to be this way. We love you. We are your parents. You will not behave this way. We taught you better than this. You are a better kid than this. You're going to be a better man than this." And I'm giving him, I'm talking to him, and I'm starting to get emotional, and you not going to Oprah me right now. This is about you. But I started to get emotional in the moment, and I had to leave the room, and he said, "I'm sorry, Papa. I'm sorry." He needs to brush his teeth. He did all those things. But I went out on the balcony. I was in tears because I realized that nobody had ever got down and talked to me eye to eye and had a conversation to me that I could understand. It was just yelling and cussing and what you're not and what you're never going to be, right? So to have a moment that I had a chance to have a conversation with a child who is my spitting image, I was not only correcting and leading him the right way, but helping my own little boy inside of me heal. It was a beautiful moment. It was a beautiful moment. And–

Michelle Obama:

Also, when we were talking last night, that's... What?

Tyler Perry:

You trying to, Oprah me. Go on, keep going.

Michelle Obama:

No, no, no, no.

Tyler Perry:

I'll be laying out in tears in a minute. Go on, let's go. Go on.

Michelle Obama:

It's like, that's why you don't want to eat dinner with me. I'll be all up in your business and telling everybody. “And then he said”...

Tyler Perry:

That's right.

Michelle Obama:

But we were just talking about... What I like to impart to parents out there, what I learned from my parenting and from being parented well is that we focus on the wrong things. And so many parents believe that what their kids need are things. Or, they want their kids to like them. It's like, ooh, don't do that. You don't need friends. Don't have a kid to have a friend. Go build your own kitchen table, and then have a baby. You can be a parent, not a friend. But a lot of parents believe that they don't have anything to give if they don't have stuff. And what I want them to see in me and why I share my story is that my parents didn't have wealth. They were poor. They didn't have access. They had no networks. They didn't go to college. They were brilliant people, couldn't go to college. But what they gave me was their gladness. My parents not just loved me, but they liked us. They liked to hear our thoughts. They liked to talk to us. In our little bitty house with no money, we did a lot of talking, and that was the first place that I was seen. And that's really the foundation of a child's self confidence, is being seen at their own kitchen table. And you don't have to have much to do that. So I just urge people, as we deal with children in our lives, whether they're ours or anybody else's, to remember the imprint we can have on them, how powerful it is for kids to be seen by us. Just see them, not who you want them to be, but just see them. Talk to them. That's what I tried to do as First Lady. Why you saw me with so many kids, number one, they lifted me up, but I understood how many millions of children are not seen. And not even because they're neglected, but their parents don't understand that importance of... You can be busy, but when you are with them, see them. Don't try to make them your mini-me. Hear their voices, because they will tell you who they are. They will tell you. From the minute they're born, they start telling you who they are. But what I try to do as First Lady is to see every child I interacted with, because I'm thinking, if the First Lady of the United States sees you, if I'm looking you in the eye, getting down... I would get down on the level with kids. Anytime I would, I just would want to tell them, I see you. You are beautiful. I am glad for you. I am glad you were here. We have to do that. All of us have a responsibility to do that for the kids in our lives. The young people sitting here, they need to know that important people, that the people that they think are important see them in the world.

Sarah:

I'm Sarah.

Producer:

And your name?

Avery:

Avery.

Producer:

How old are you, Avery?

Avery:

12.

Sarah:

Avery had a tough birth and entry into the world and has been in speech therapy and other kinds of therapy basically ever since. I think, beyond the practical things and making sure that Avery has the right support and teachers and therapists in her life, between the two of us, it's just making sure that we know that we're here for each other no matter what. So it's almost like, parenting now, you have to look for opportunities for your kids to be able to experience independence. So we do it in small ways, I'd say. Avery really likes baking, and she's an excellent, incredible baker. And so, it sounds small, but she develops and studies recipes, and sometimes they really work out beautifully, and sometimes they don't, depending on what age she is. I guess we both have different fears surrounding that. Everything from, will the people around me be able to understand what I'm saying, or will I be able to make friends? That's probably her life's work and challenge.

Tyler Perry:

I can tell you right now, your parents had no idea that you would be the First Lady of the United States. I remember I was talking about my father, and I was talking about the abuse I suffered on some show or something, and he saw it. I don't talk to him anymore because I've learned how to protect me and stay, keep what's-

Michelle Obama:

Boundaries.

Tyler Perry:

Boundaries, for sure. But I do support him. I give him the same thing he gave me. We had a roof over our head. We were never hungry. He made sure of that. So I make sure he's never hungry. I make sure he has a roof over his head, even though he did so many things to me. But what he said to me... He sent a message through my brother. The message was, "If I had beat your ass one more time, you would've been Barack Obama." What he meant by that was he was diminishing the success that I had had because I wasn't president. But also, the biggest part of that, he thought that it was his abuse, it was his beatings, it was his negativity that made me who I am, when the truth of the matter is, it was my mother's love that brought me to this place. And had I not had that love, I don't know where I'd be. So I would tell every parent, you can look at those kids and may not think that they're nothing or they look like their daddy or this and that. You never know who is in your house. You never know.

Michelle Obama:

There are diamonds all over this earth.

Tyler Perry:

That's right.

Michelle Obama:

And we have to give ourselves permission to protect ourselves in this world.

Tyler Perry:

And be okay with it.

Michelle Obama:

And be okay with it.

Tyler Perry:

And be okay with it, yeah.All right, let's go to this. I don't want leave without talking about this because you say this, your famous quote, "When they go low, we go high." So, it is so powerful. When I first heard it, I was so moved by it, especially all the things that were going in the country. But Madea had some... She had a–

Michelle Obama:

What's Madea... What's she saying? What she got to say?

Tyler Perry:Okay. You say, "When they go low," and Madea will answer. Okay?

Michelle Obama:

When they go low...

Tyler Perry:

We go to jail. Hell, I'm not going to deal with this.

Michelle Obama:

Oh, Madea.

Tyler Perry:

Give another one, baby. Give me another one.

Michelle Obama:

When they go low...

Tyler Perry:

When they go low, I go to my closet and reach up high to get my weapons. That's where I'm going.

Michelle Obama:

Not the weapons, Madea.

Tyler Perry:

Get my weapons. Go on, go on, give me

Michelle Obama:

Not the weapons.

Tyler Perry:

Give me one more.

Michelle Obama:

When they go low...

Tyler Perry:

When they go low, I will try to go high. As long as I'm high, I can stay high. But if I ain't high, I'm going low.

Michelle Obama:

Oh, Madea. Oh, Lord. See, that's why Madea has never been to the White House.

Tyler Perry:

Although, she was about to go during that last administration just to have a conversation. And with that said, I want to say thank you to you and your husband and your lovely family. Keep showing us how to go high, how to stay high.

Michelle Obama:

Thank you, Tyler Perry. You all, let's give it up for Tyler Perry, too. I love me some Tyler Perry.

Tyler Perry:

Ms. Michelle Obama, everybody.

Michelle Obama:

Love you all so much.

Michelle Obama:

Oh, Madea. Always keeping it real. I want to thank Tyler for bringing her along and for teaching me a thing or two about resilience and power and healing and what it means to keep your light shining. What a beautiful lesson. Tyler's story reminds us that if you had a tough childhood, that doesn't mean you're broken. In fact, your experience can give you unique skills and perspectives just like they did for him. And Officer Edwards's story reminds us that even if you find yourself knocked down in the middle of a crisis, you have the strength from within to get back up. What about you? I'm sure we've all had moments where we've had to call on our own resilience, so I hope you all are as moved by tonight's episode as I was. Thanks for listening, and talk to you again soon.

Speaker:

This has been a Higher Ground and Audible original, produced by Higher Ground and Little Everywhere. Executive produced by Dan Fierman and Mukta Mohan for Higher Ground and Jane Marie for Little Everywhere. Audible executive producers, Zola Mashariki and Nick D'Angelo. Audible co-producers, Keith Wooten and Glynn Pogue. Produced by Mike Richter with additional production by Joy Sanford, Dann Gallucci, Nancy Golombisky, and Lisa Pollak with production support from Andrew Eapen, Jenna Levin and Julia Murray. Location recording by Jody Elff. Special thanks to Melissa Winter, Jill Van Lokeren, Crystal Carson, Alex May-Sealey, Halle Ewing, Merone Hailemeskel, Sierra Tyler, Carl Ray Njeri Radway, Meredith Koop, Sara Corbett, Tyler Lechtenberg, and Asra Najam. The theme song is Unstoppable by Sia. The closing song is Lovely Day by Bill Withers. Audible Head of US content, Rachel Ghiazza. Head of Audible Studios, Zola Mashariki. Copyright 2023 by Higher Ground Audio, LLC. Sound Recording copyright 2023 by Higher Ground Audio, LLC. Voiceover by Novena Carmel. This episode was recorded live at the Fox Theater in Atlanta.