Former first lady Michelle Obama has revealed she’s in therapy to help her transition into the next phase of her life.
The 60-year-old has been married to former US president Barack Obama since 1992 and shares two daughters, Malia, 26, and Sasha, 23, with the Democrat.
Last month, Obama was forced to address rumours that she and Barack were getting divorced after he attended Jimmy Carter’s funeral and Donald Trump’s second presidential inauguration alone.
Speaking on The Jay Shetty Podcast, the former first lady said of her current headspace: “At this phase of my life, I'm in therapy right now because I'm transitioning, you know?
“I'm 60 years old, I've finished a really hard thing in my life with my family intact, I'm an empty nester, my girls are in – you know, they've been launched,” she said.
“Empty nester” syndrome is the name given to the feelings of loss experienced by parents when their children leave home for the first time as adults.
Malia Obama graduated from Harvard in 2021 and works as a TV script writer. Meanwhile, Sasha graduated from the University of Southern California in 2023 and is pursuing higher education.
Obama said a combination of being out of public service and her children being fully grown has left her in a situation where “every choice that I’m making is completely mine”.
She explained: “I now don't have the excuse of, ‘Well, my kids need this’ or ‘My husband needs that’ or ‘The country needs that.’
“So, I'm getting that tune-up for this next phase because I believe this is a whole ‘nother phase in life for me. And I now have the wisdom to know—let me go get some coaching while I'm doing it,” she said.
Encouraging others to try therapy, Obama added: “I am an advocate of it. Everybody needs to find their form of it, the best way they can.”
It comes after Obama spoke about the discourse around her marriage during an appearance on Sophia Bush’s Work in Progress podcast last month.
“That’s the thing that we as women, I think we struggle with disappointing people,” she said. “I mean, so much so that this year people couldn't even fathom that I was making a choice for myself that they had to assume that my husband and I are divorcing.
“This couldn't be a grown woman just making a set of decisions for herself, right?” she added. “But that's what society does to us. We start actually, finally going, ‘What am I doing? Who am I doing this for?’ And if it doesn't fit into the sort of stereotype of what people think we should do, then it gets labeled as something negative and horrible.”
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