‘No Challenge Is Too Great For Today's Young Women'

MICHELLE OBAMA – who loves talking ‘more than anything’ – reveals what life in the White House was like, the advice she’d like to give to the Duchess of Sussex and the optimism she feels for the next generation…

What advice helped you maintain your identity while being a wife, mother, lawyer and First Lady?

I think it’s the idea that no-one is in charge of my happiness but me. It’s not necessarily something I was told in one lightning-bolt moment, but instead it’s something I’ve learnt over many years, through many conversations with my husband, my friends and family, and, most importantly, with myself.

When we’re getting pulled in every direction, it’s so easy to find a scapegoat – work is too demanding, the kids are acting up, there’s just too much on our plates. We can get lost in the frustration and lose sight of the control we have over our own lives. As women, our identities evolve with the different hats we wear – we’re independent women, we’re professionals, we’re spouses and mothers. It’s easy for our sense of self to get swallowed up by the other people in our lives, even when they’re people that we care for and love deeply. Take it from someone who’s married to Barack Obama. He is the love of my life, and he is a force all of his own. He’s always had deep passions and strong ideas about the kind of life he wanted to lead, and, back when we were first dating, my sense of my own future wasn’t as fully developed. So I realised that I had to figure out who I was before we could build a life together that was satisfying for us both. I put in the work back then. I did a lot of journalling and soul-searching. And, to be honest, it’s a lifelong process, something that every couple has to deal with at some level.

In the UK, the public has recently fallen in love with a new American icon: Meghan, Duchess of Sussex. What advice would you give her for the role she’s now in?