Michelle Obama brings message of hope to S.F.
People entered San Francisco’s Masonic Auditorium with water dripping off their clothes Saturday night, taking shelter from the storm soaking the region, but also to find comfort in a voice of our recent political past.
Michelle Obama took to the Masonic’s stage while waving to the raucous crowd and showing off an emerald green pantsuit and rocking a head of braids to much applause. It took the former first lady little time to level with the crowd in a candid way about life, mentioning how she finally felt comfortable wearing her hair how she wanted.
“Freedom!” she screamed to much applause. “They wouldn’t have understood my braids,” Obama said about her time in the White House, referencing the nation at large.
Of course, the audience loved her, providing a standing ovation while some in the crowd were jumping in excitement or capturing the moment by taking videos with their phones. One person even carried an oversize cutout portrait of the former first lady to show her.
It was a fitting start to her appearance promoting her latest book, “The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times,” which collects her stories and insights on how to adapt to life’s changes and obstacles. The book tour continued Sunday night at the Masonic.
She was joined by actress Tracee Ellis Ross, a friend who moderated the conversation, centering around her life as a mother, working through the challenges she faced and how her life experiences shaped who she has become.
Obama said she began formulating the idea for this book near the end of the tour for her 2018 memoir, “Becoming.” She said during that tour, she had a lot of conversations with people about their concerns, worries and fears about life. “A lot of it was, ‘How do you do this life thing,’ ” Obama said. Over the course of the night she referenced several passages and chapters from the new book, such as how her parents raised her to go out of her comfort zone, but she spent most of the time sharing her experience and advice with the audience — including dealing with the coronavirus pandemic.
“I was more stuck in my head,” Obama said while describing her mindset when the pandemic struck, admitting that she, like many people, began to feel herself sinking into depression. “There’s the spinning and negative looping when we are too much in our heads.”
A running theme of the night, although he wasn’t named, was former President Donald Trump and how his administration handled COVID-19. “Feeling hurt and angry that the country picked that,” Obama said, referring to Trump.
She didn’t dwell on him, though. Obama spent most of the conversation talking about motherhood, racial tensions, empowerment and working through life’s obstacles. “What I say in the book is we have to stop saying, ‘When will things get better,’ and (instead say), ‘How do we cope with the natural uncertainty that is life,’ ” she said. “That’s why so many people are struggling because they’re trying to fit into this little box that most of us will never fit into.”
Obama explained how she let her daughters, Sasha and Malia, have more control over their lives at a younger age to let “them feel some pain and anxiety. I love my girls and I don’t want anything to go wrong for them, but that’s just not reality.” She said that when parents block their children from experiencing fear and anxiety, they block them from also experiencing the competency and resiliency needed to make it through life.
Obama and Ellis Ross spent the dwindling moments of the evening breaking down modern society’s idea of what a man should grow up to be and the pressures of being a boy. Obama listed the common traits people consider when they think of a man, according to societal standards. “You better be a winning leader, who’s strong, tall,” Obama said.
Obama concluded the night by noting that the best investment would be to structure society so that more people are seen and feel supported, then ended the night with her oftrepeated mantra against criticism and hate: “If they go low, we go high.”