WASHINGTON, D.C., USA — Former first lady Michelle Obama said seeing racial inequality and the Trump administration's "hypocrisy" has contributed to a form of low-grade depression she's been experiencing during the coronavirus pandemic.
"I know that I am dealing with some form of low-grade depression," Obama said on her Spotify podcast. "Not just because of the quarantine, but because of the racial strife, and just seeing this administration, watching the hypocrisy of it, day in and day out, is dispiriting."
During the podcast episode that debuted on Wednesday, the former first lady spoke with her friend journalist Michele Norris to discuss "our relationship with ourselves"
Obama described how she's been going through "those emotional highs and lows that I think everybody feels, where you just don't feel yourself."
"They've been real for me, and, you know I don't think I'm unusual, in that, but, I'd be remiss to say that part of this depression, is also a result of, what we're seeing in terms of, the protests, the continued racial unrest, that has plagued this country, since its birth," she explained.
Michelle Obama also described how it's "exhausting" waking up to "yet another story of a Black man or a Black person somehow being dehumanized, or hurt or killed, or, falsely accused of something"
"And, and it, it has led to a weight, that I haven't felt in my life, in, in a while," Obama said.
During the first episode of her podcast, she interviewed her husband, Barack Obama.
