I was a lifeguard, camp counselor, the president of the YMCA Leaders Corps. I also took piano lessons. I was a dancer.
You can be chased home or hit or called names or spit on, and it's over. You have the memory of it, but it's very different from the emotional and psychological experience of feeling invisible, of not learning the confidence to stand up in class and speak.
I'd like to be out in the city every day, listening to what people are saying and asking about what they need. I'd like to inspire others by doing as much as I can to help people who are trying to make a better life for themselves and others.
Finding the right person can be so hard that often, when a person finally finds someone she or he is comfortable with, she or he just makes it work.
Some people are just quiet - they don't need to be talking all the time and aren't extroverted, but they're not necessarily afraid to talk. I'm not really a shy person.
Pay equity matters because those dollars add up over time.
I know my husband loves me fiercely and passionately. I know he supports me and will always stand up for me.
A very tiny percentage of people with mental illness are also violent. We know this. The constant linking of the two together in national media is so misleading.
When you become first lady, it's like, 'O.K., now what do you do?'
My life was very compartmentalized. I went to a school that was all white, and then I went home and to my black family.
Black women do not have as many positive images in the media as we should.
Labels put people in boxes, and those boxes are shaped like coffins.
