Michelle Obama - The Light We Carry : Overcoming in Uncertain Times

American Grown

Becoming

The Light We Carry

The Light We Carry is a work of nonfiction. Names and identifying details of certain individuals mentioned in this book have been changed in order to protect their privacy.

Copyright 2022 by Michelle Obama

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Crown, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

Crown and the Crown colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:

Brooks Permissions: Excerpt from Paul Robeson by Gwendolyn Brooks. Reprinted by permission of Brooks Permissions.

The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Copper Canyon Press: Excerpt from A House Called Tomorrow from Not Go Away Is My Name. Copyright 2018, 2020 by Alberto Ros. Reprinted by permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Copper Canyon Press, coppercanyonpress.org. All rights reserved.

Writers House LLC: Excerpt from The Hill We Climb by Amanda Gorman, copyright 2021 by Amanda Gorman. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Photograph credits appear on .

Hardback ISBN9780593237465

Ebook ISBN9780593237472

crownpublishing.com

Book design by Elizabeth Rendfleisch, adapted for ebook

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To all those who use their light to make sure that others feel seen

This book is dedicated to my mom and dad, Marian and Fraser, who instilled in me the values Ive long used to navigate the world. Their commonsense wisdom made our home a space where I felt seen and heard, where I could practice making my own decisions, where I could become the kind of person I wanted to be. They were consistently there for me, and their unconditional love taught me that I had a voice very early on in my life. I am so grateful to them for igniting my light.

If someone in your family tree was trouble,

A hundred were not:

The bad do not winnot finally,

No matter how loud they are.

We simply would not be here

If that were so.

You are made, fundamentally, from the good.

With this knowledge, you never march alone.

You are the breaking news of the century.

You are the good who has come forward

Through it all, even if so many days

Feel otherwise.

Alberto Ros, from A House Called Tomorrow

• Part One

• Part Two

• Part Three

Heres my dad helping me cool off during a hot South Side summer.

At some point when I was a child, my father started using a cane to keep himself balanced when he walked. I dont remember exactly when it showed up in our home on the South Side of ChicagoI was maybe four or five years old at the timebut suddenly it was there, slim and sturdy and made of a smooth dark wood. The cane was an early concession to multiple sclerosis, the disease that had given my father a severe left-legged limp. Slowly and silently and probably long before he received a formal diagnosis, MS was undermining his body, eating away at his central nervous system and weakening his legs as he went about his everyday business: working at the citys water filtration plant, running a household with my mom, trying to raise good kids.

The cane helped my dad get himself up the stairs to our apartment or down a city block. In the evenings, he would set it against the arm of his recliner and seemingly forget about it as he watched sports on TV, or listened to jazz on the stereo, or pulled me onto his lap to ask about my day at school. I was fascinated by the canes curved handle, the black rubber tip at its end, the hollow clatter it made when it fell to the floor. Sometimes Id try to use it, imitating my fathers motions as I hobbled around our living room, hoping to feel what it was like to walk in his shoes. But I was too small and the cane was too big, and so instead I would incorporate it as a stage prop in my games of pretending.

As we saw it in my family, that cane symbolized nothing. It was just a tool, the same way my mothers spatula was a tool in the kitchen, or my grandfathers hammer got used any time he came over to fix a broken shelf or curtain rod. It was utilitarian, protective, something to lean on when needed.

What we didnt really want to acknowledge was the fact that my fathers condition was gradually growing worse, his body quietly turning on itself. Dad knew it. Mom knew it. My older brother, Craig, and I were just kids at the time, but kids are no dummies, and so even as our father still played catch with us in the backyard and showed up at our piano recitals and Little League games, we knew it, too. We were starting to understand that Dads illness left us more vulnerable as a family, less protected. In an emergency, itd be harder for him to leap into action and save us from a fire or an intruder. We were learning that life was not in our control.

Every so often, too, the cane would fail our father. He would misjudge a step, or his foot would catch a lump in the rug, and suddenly hed stumble and fall. And in that single freeze-frame instant, with his body in midair, we would catch sight of everything we were hoping not to seehis vulnerability, our helplessness, the uncertainty and harder times ahead.

The sound of a full-grown man hitting the floor is thunderousa thing you never forget. It shook our tiny apartment like an earthquake, sending us rushing to his aid.

Fraser, be careful! my mom would say, as if her words could undo what had happened. Craig and I would leverage our young bodies to help our dad back to his feet, scrambling to retrieve his cane and eyeglasses from wherever theyd flown, as if our speed in getting him upright might erase the image of his fall. As if any one of us could fix anything. These moments left me feeling worried and afraid, realizing what we stood to lose and how easily it could happen.

Usually, my father would just laugh the whole thing off, downplaying the fall, signaling that it was okay to smile or crack a joke. There seemed to be an unspoken pact between us: We needed to let these moments go. In our home, laughter was yet another well-worked tool.

Now that Im an adult, what I understand about multiple sclerosis is this: The disease impacts millions of people worldwide. MS trips up the immune system in such a way that it starts attacking from within, mistaking friend for foe, self for other. It disrupts the central nervous system, stripping away the protective casing from neural fibers called axons, leaving their delicate strands exposed.

If MS caused my father pain, he didnt talk about it. If the indignities of his disability dimmed his spirit, he rarely showed it. I dont know if he ever took falls when we werent aroundat the water-filtration plant, or walking in or out of the barbershopthough it stands to reason he did, at least occasionally. Nonetheless, years passed. My dad went to work, came home, kept smiling. Maybe this was a form of denial. Maybe it was simply the code he chose to live by.