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‘Depression Is Understandable’: Michelle Obama Reiterates Struggles With Mental Health Amid Pandemic, George Floyd Death

   DailyWire.com
n this screengrab, Michelle Obama is seen during the 2020 BET Awards. The 20th annual BET Awards, which aired June 28, 2020, was held virtually due to restrictions to slow the spread of COVID-19.
BET Awards 2020/Getty Images via Getty Images

Former first lady Michelle Obama reiterated how depressed she has been during the past year, especially in light of George Floyd’s death.

“Depression is understandable during these times,” Obama said during an interview with People published Wednesday.

Mentioning specifically the death of George Floyd, who died last May in the custody of Minneapolis police, Obama described 2020 as “a time when a lot of hard stuff was going on.”

“We had the continued killing of black men at the hands of police,” Obama continued. “Just seeing the video of George Floyd, experiencing that eight minutes.”

“That’s a lot to take on, not to mention being in the middle of a quarantine,” she added.

“I needed to acknowledge what I was going through, because a lot of times we feel like we have to cover that part of ourselves up, that we always have to rise above and look as if we’re not paddling hard underneath the water,” Obama further told the magazine.

“This is what mental health is. You have highs and lows,” she said. “What I have said to my daughters is that one of the things that is getting me through is that I’m old enough to know that things will get better.”

Obama, who is slated to be inducted into the Women’s Hall of Fame in October, has spoken and written often about how she feels slighted by certain elements of the country for whom she served eight years as first lady.

As The Daily Wire reported:

Michelle Obama, whose memoir “Becoming” was reported in November 2019 to have sold over 11.5 million copies, making it one of the best selling memoirs of all time, stated, “That incident in Central Park, which infuriated all of us, as we watched it, it was not unfamiliar. This is what the white community doesn’t understand about being a person of color in this nation, is that there are daily slights — in our workplaces, where people talk over you, or people don’t even see you.”

“Denielle and I, when the girls were little, this is when I was First Lady,” Obama continued. “I am Michelle Obama, the First Lady of the United States of America, and we had just finished taking the girls to a soccer game, we were stopping to get ice cream, and I had told the Secret Service to stand back because we were trying to be normal, trying to go in. It was Haagen-Daaz, wasn’t it?”

[…]

Obama: “And there was a line, and once again, when I am just a black woman, I notice that white people don’t even see me. They’re not even looking at me. So I’m standing there with two little black girls, another black female adult, they’re in soccer uniforms, and a white woman cuts right in front of us to order. Like she didn’t even see us. And the girl behind the counter almost took her order. And I had to stand up, ‘cause I know Danielle is like, ‘Well, I’m not gonna cause a scene with Michelle Obama.’”

RelatedMichelle Obama Blames Her ‘Low-Grade Depression’ Partly On ‘Hypocrisy’ Of Trump Administration

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