To mark the release of MichelleObama's new book, ‘The Light We Carry: Overcoming In Uncertain Times’, read an exclusive extract in which she reflects on the strength to be found in standing out.
Even as I stood out, I quickly realised nobody was paying much attention. I was as inconsequential as a puff of air. There was a kind of imperviousness about Princeton in general. Something about its genteel Gothic arches and more than 200 years of proud elitism created a sense that all of us, regardless of where we’d arrived from, were just visitors passing through. The institution would outlive us all.
I understood none of this at the time. I hadn’t yet grasped the concept of entitlement. It hadn’t dawned on me that the certainty and comfort being showcased by some of my peers were fed by an underground spring of generational wealth and deep networks of privilege. All I knew was that I felt different and occasionally diminished. I’d been admitted to the school, but that didn’t necessarily grant me a sense of belonging.
There’s something unnerving about moving through a place and not seeing people who look like you anywhere. It’s haunting, almost, as if your “kind” has been erased from the planet completely. Whatever the signals in those spaces were – whether people saw me as different, or unentitled to be there, or problematic in some way, even if what I was sensing was unconscious or unintended – I didn’t need to let those signals in. I had a choice about it. I could let my own life, my own actions, represent my truth. I could keep showing up and keep doing the work. That poison wasn’t mine.
I learnt that I could attach better feelings to my differentness. It was helpful to do when entering a new space, a kind of psychological squaring of the shoulders. I could take a second to remind myself of what, inside the walls of my own home, inside the shelter of my friendships, I already knew to be true. My validation came from inside. And it helped to be able to carry that power into a new room.
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