This week’s blog post features some of the oh-yes-passages from part two of The Light We Carry by Former First Lady Michelle Obama. What do I mean by oh-yes-passages? Passages that resonated with me. Passages that made me pause and reflect. Passages that touched me in some way. 

(If you missed the blog post about part one, you can click here to read it.)

“I’m not sure how friendship, or even just engaging with another person in the three minutes it takes to buy your morning cup of coffee, has come to feel like a small act of bravery. But increasingly it seems that way. Perhaps, as I mentioned earlier, it’s because we now carry with us little rectangular shields against face-to-face sociability — our phones — which I think also shield us from serendipity. Any time we avoid even a small real-life connection, we are to some extent avoiding possibility.”

“When we drop our fears about newness and open ourselves to others, even through quick and casual interactions, even while masked — saying hello to someone in the elevator, for example, or chatting in a grocery line — we are practicing an important form of micro-connection. We’re signaling a general okayness between us, adding just a drop of social glue to a world that desperately needs it.”

“The best way to be a friend to someone, as I see it, is to revel in their uniqueness, to appreciate each person for what they bring, receiving them simply as themselves.”

“Over the course of my adult life, I’ve lived in a number of places, but as far as I’m concerned, I’ve only ever had one real home. My home is my family. My home is Barack.”

“Like a lot of people, I had ideas about what marriage would be like, and few of them turned out to be right.”

“Much as it is with marriage and partnership, the fantasy versions of being a parent sit at the forefront of our cultural imagination, whereas the reality is way, way, way less perfect.”

“Caring for your kids and watching them grow is one of the most rewarding endeavors on earth, and at the same time it can drive you nuts.”

Please note: I am including a link to buy the book that I’m highlighting this week. If you use my link, I do make a small commission on your purchase at no additional cost to you. I am working with Bookshop.org which also sends a portion of the profit to support local, independent bookstores.