{"id":37874,"date":"2025-11-06T06:11:14","date_gmt":"2025-11-06T06:11:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/michelle-obama-says-her-mothers-dying-words-taught-her-how-to-embrace-her-60s\/"},"modified":"2025-11-06T06:11:14","modified_gmt":"2025-11-06T06:11:14","slug":"michelle-obama-says-her-mothers-dying-words-taught-her-how-to-embrace-her-60s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/michelle-obama-says-her-mothers-dying-words-taught-her-how-to-embrace-her-60s\/","title":{"rendered":"Michelle Obama says her mother&#8217;s dying words taught her how to embrace her 60s"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/690c1a9b7f37aa653f557e47?format=jpeg\" alt=\"Michelle Obama\"\/><figcaption>Michelle Obama<\/p>\n<p>Nathan Congleton\/NBC<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<ul>\n<li>Michelle Obama says that one of the last conversations she had with her mom gave her a new outlook on growing older.<\/li>\n<li>The former first lady added that being in her 60s has made her more &quot;mindful&quot; of how she spends her time.<\/li>\n<li>&quot;If I&#039;m lucky, I live to 90 and that&#039;s 30 good summers,&quot; she said.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Michelle Obama says that one of the last conversations she had with her mother shaped the way she thinks about growing older.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking at an event at People&#039;s headquarters in New York City on Wednesday, Obama recounted a brief exchange she had with her mother, Marian Robinson, before her death in May 2024, per People.<\/p>\n<p>While watching TV together one day, Obama recalled how her mother leaned over and said, &quot;Wow, that was quick.&quot; When Obama asked her what she meant, Robinson replied, &quot;Life.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>&quot;That&#039;s all she said, but what I got from that was even in her practical-minded way, that you&#039;re never ready. And I don&#039;t think that she was done living. It just comes, and then life is over,&quot; Obama said. &quot;I was like, &#039;Let me hear that. Let me understand that, that even with a wonderful life, I want to be present.&#039; &quot;<\/p>\n<p>Obama, who turned 61 in January, said that mantra guides the way she wants to live &quot;this last chapter&quot; of her life.<\/p>\n<p>After years spent raising her daughters and standing beside her husband, Barack Obama, through public life, the former first lady said she&#039;s finally at a stage where she can make choices based on what she wants.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;This is the first time in my life where every single decision I make is mine. It&#039;s what I want to do,&quot; she said. &quot;What do I want, what do I feel? This is the first time that I&#039;ve been able to do that for me, no excuses. That means that the consequences are mine, too, and there&#039;s a freedom with that.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Obama added that being in her 60s has made her all the more &quot;mindful&quot; of how she spends her time.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;If I&#039;m lucky, I live to 90 and that&#039;s 30 good summers,&quot; she said.<\/p>\n<p>This isn&#039;t the first time that Obama has shared her thoughts about growing older.<\/p>\n<p>In an interview with People, published on Monday, Obama said that although she&#039;s embracing her age, she still expects to keep coloring her gray hair.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;My mother dyed her hair until the day she died. She had a beautiful sandy color blonde that mixed in well with the gray. I was like, &#039;Yeah, I&#039;m going to be doing that too,&#039;&quot; she said.<\/p>\n<p>During an appearance on &quot;The Late Show with Stephen Colbert&quot; on Wednesday, Obama said growing older has given her the freedom to live life on her own terms.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;The beauty about understanding my power of saying no, it frees me up to say a lot of yes. But yes to the things that I want to do in the way that I want to do them. I think that&#039;s something, you know, you get at 61,&quot; Obama told Colbert.<\/p>\n<p>She added that, like many women, it took her &quot;a lifetime&quot; to feel confident in her abilities and to own her wisdom.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;We need a lifetime of success to say, &#039;Well, maybe I know something. Maybe I got a few things right. Maybe I can trust my gut, finally, at 61,&#039;&quot; Obama said.<\/p>\n<p>Read the original article on Business Insider<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Michelle Obama Nathan Congleton\/NBC Michelle Obama says that one of the last conversations she had with her mom gave her a new outlook on growing older. The former first lady added that being in her 60s has made her more &quot;mindful&quot; of how she spends her time. &quot;If I&#039;m lucky, I live to 90 and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37875,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-37874","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37874"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37874\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}