This book is journey into a world and into a woman's soul for me. What am I getting from reading this book? Maybe this is me "sitting at the feet" of a woman who needs to be understood for who she really is, not what the media portrayed her as. Maybe if I can understand that just because someone is famous or high profile, doesn't make them less human and less worthy of respect.
"Even when it's not pretty or perfect. Even when it's more real than you want it to be. Your story is what you have, what you will always have, It is something to own." MO
"Becoming" is Michelle's story. It is real, raw and revealing. It is the journey of a woman that started in the South Side of Chicago and took her to some amazing places... including the White House. But her journey is so much more than just one residence for eight years.
"Everyone on earth, they tell us, was carrying around an unseen history and that alone deserved some tolerance." MO
My journey to understand the world of African Americans started with Harriet Tubman and has led me to Michelle Obama.
"But what if that wasn't enough? What if, after all the fuss, we were just the best of the worst." MO
I am Canadian. When I think about my exposure to racism, I go back to grade 4 and think of the Suffolk ewe-lamb I chose to bring to school for our "Pet Day". I remember one comment from one classmate.
"Why didn't you bring a white lamb?"
"Somewhere in the background was another more-than-decent likelihood, they they, like me, were descended from slaves." MO
All I have as an experience, is a small sheep that was discriminated against because it had black wool.
"There are truths we face and truths we ignore." MO
I have to admit, I was mostly sheltered in my Northern B.C. community. But that day, out of hundreds of white lambs, I chose Rosie. Something in me thought that she needed to be special that day. And for me she was. I was just sad that the other children didn't see how beautiful she was.
"It hurts to live after someone has died. It just does." MO
I had to take a moment to sit with Michelle in her pain as she wrote these words. She expressed something in me that I didn't have the words for.
"When voters got to see me as a person, they understood that the caricatures were untrue. I've learned that it's harder to hate up close" MO
I wanted to highlight that last statement. It is something I wish everyone could understand. It is something I understand and find the most valuable part of my life's journey.
"I hadn’t been expecting to fit right in, obviously, but I think I arrived there naïvely believing I’d feel some visceral connection to the continent I’ve grown up thinking as a sort of mythic motherland, as if going there would bestow on me some feeling of completeness. But Africa, of course, owed us nothing. It’s a curious thing to realize, the in-betweenness one feels being African American in Africa. It gave me a hard-to-explain feeling of sadness, a sense of being uprooted in both lands" MO
I wonder if I would feel like that if I went to Germany or Denmark. A place once called home by my grandparents. But since they moved to Canada, had a family, and their family had families... those families have no connection to what they used to call home. In reading Michelle's words, I recall often people asking "Where are you from?" and wondering what that even meant. But in reality... who am I kidding. My grandparents chose to come to Canada... Michelle's ancestors were kidnapped and resettled, not as homesteaders, but as slaves.
"What I lived for now were the unrehearsed, in-between moments where nobody was performing and no one was judging and real surprise was still possible - where sometimes without warning you might feel a tiny latch spring open on your heart." MO
Living for the moment and in the moment. I have to believe that everyone wants a place and a space where they can drop their guard and just "be". But we have created a world where "being" is replaced by doing and performing and parading and working endlessly. Maybe the Creator of the Cosmos designed us to just "be"... and then everything we needed to sustain and grow life would flow out from that.
"Throughout the campaign, I'd asked myself over and over whether America was really ready to elect a black president, whether the country was in a strong enough place to see beyond race and move past prejudice. Finally we were about to find out." MO
Election night: November 4, 2008: I was in a hotel in Delavan, Wisconsin, watching the election results. I had gone down to the States to take part in a four day training program through work. I was in the U.S. of A when history was made. I don't know if it really sunk in what I witnessed on the television that night, when Barack Obama stood on that stage with his wife and two daughters, after the results had been tabulated and a conclusion was made. Barack Obama would be the next President of the United States of America. What I didn't realize was just how close I was to the action. Barack Obama was in his home town of Chicago as the country voted him in... and not even a two hour drive from my hotel in Delavan. History was happening that close to me.
"There is no handbook for incoming First Ladies of the United States. It's not technically a job. nor is it an official government title. It comes with no salary and no spelled-out set of obligations. It's a strange kind of sidecar to the presidency, a seat that by the time I came to it had already been occupied by more than forty-three different women, each of whom had done it in her own way." MO
Reading this book, diving into Michelle's story is a lesson in compassion for me. I don't understand her world. There is no hope of me every walking in her shoes. So all I have to offer her is compassion for the world she walked into because it was the world chosen by others around her... including her husband. She walked with him on the most difficult journey, supporting him, loving him and lifting him up to the masses as the man that could do the most prestigious job in the world. That must have been a weighty burden to bear. But what did she do with it? She did what I did when I walked into my husband's world... she planted a garden.
"As the morning went on, we planted lettuce and spinach, fennel and broccoli. We put in carrots and collard greens and onions and shell peas. We planted berry bushes and a lot of herbs. What would come from it? I don't know, the same way I didn't know what lay ahead for us in the White House, nor what lay ahead for the country or for any of these sweet children surrounding me. All we could do then was put our faith into the effort, trusting that with sun and rain and time, something half-decent would push up through the dirt." MO
She planted a garden and like me... she was proud of it.
"We didn't join a church in Washington, because we didn't want to subject another congregation to the kind of bad-faith attacks that rained down on Trinity, our church in Chicago. It was a sacrifice, though. I missed the warmth of a spiritual community." MO
This is where my compassion really kicks in for the Obamas. I have been among a lot of "Christians" who claim that if you aren't going to "church" you are not obeying God. If that is the case... how does someone like the President of the United States and his family "obey God" if they can't blend in a community like they would hope to, but their profile and status prevents them from doing so. Maybe those people who say that "church attendance" is mandatory to please the Creator, need to take a better look at the obstacles out there.
"Bear with me here, because this doesn't necessarily get easier. It would be one thing if America were a simple place with a simple story. If I could narrate my part in it only through the lens of what was orderly and sweet. If there were no steps backward. And if every sadness, when it came, turned out at least to be redemptive in the end.
But that's not America, and it's not me, either. I'm not going to try to bend this into any kind of perfect shape." MO
This is why I am reading this book. If there is ever a common theme among the books I have been reading since I started my book blog... the authors are not "trying to bend this into any kind of perfect shape". I want to get there... I want to get to the point where I can be honest about my journey. I think I am doing that a little on this blog as I journal through my rocket reads. Maybe it is just a little of the Enneagram 4 envy shining through. I admire Michelle, but I also have a little envy... a longing to be just a little more authentic about my journey. This book is a amazing for that. She talks about the hard stuff and doesn't hide it. If anyone would be in a place where hiding the truth was the biggest temptation... it would be her. But she is bold and tells her story. I really admire that.
"I'd been lucky to have parents, teachers and mentors who'd fed me with a consistent, simple message: You matter. As an adult, I wanted to pass those words to a new generation." MO
So, for this blog post, I have inserted as many of my favourite quotes from Michelle that I could. I read the hard cover book this time, so I didn't have the option of highlighting any of the quotes which is what I do in my Ibooks. This post is my record of the wisdom that Michelle Obama has passed along to me.
I usually pass along a link to my blog to the author, and I have received quite a few replies from some of the authors I have shared here. I won't be doing that this time, because I have no way of emailing the former First Lady of the USA with a link to my meagre blog. But I still want to convey my gratitude and thanks for this book, even though she will most likely never read this. Her story has planted itself deep into the crevices of my soul and for that I am very grateful.
"So many of us go through life with our stories hidden, feeling ashamed or afraid when our whole truth doesn't live up to some established ideal... That is, until someone dares to start telling that story differently" MO
It is my remaining wish that Michelle's words change me. It is still a journey, and a long one at that, but I long for the kind of courage and spirit that I discovered in her story these last few months.
"It's all a process, steps along a path. Becoming requires equal parts patience and rigor. Becoming is never giving up on the idea that there's more growing to be done. MO
"I'm an ordinary person who found herself on an extraordinary journey." MO
Maybe even every once in a while, I'll even remember the heart that inspired a ten year old girl to chose a black ewe-lamb to bring to school, because to her, she was just as beautiful.
"It's not about being perfect. It's not about where you get yourself in the end. There's power in allowing yourself to be known and heard, in owning your unique story, in using your authentic voice. And there's grace in being willing to know and hear others. This, for me, is how we become." MO
