Becoming

I just finished reading "Becoming" by Michelle Obama. I loved this book! I loved every page of it! Her book is divided into 3 sections, Becoming Me, Becoming Us, Becoming More.
I especially loved the first section, Becoming Me. It was mainly about her upbringing on the south side of Chicago. I was excited that she mentioned her family was part of the great migration because I have been studying up on the great migration in preparation for Black History Month. I loved reading the stories about her education, from elementary to college. I often try to talk about privilege to people and her book discusses it in such an easy to understand way. She talks about her grandparents and the discrimination they faced when they moved from the south to Chicago. Jobs were hard to come by as most managers hired people who had a union card. Most Black people were unable to get a union card.  She says " this particular form of discrimination altered the destinies of generations of African Americans, including the men in my family, limiting their income, their opportunity, and, eventually, their aspirations." p. 38 She recalled the story of a high school counselor who informed her she wasn't Princeton material. She talks about how she didn't change her method, she changed her goal. She applied to Princeton, and got help from someone else. I love this: "I never did stop in to tell that counselor she was wrong--that I was Princeton material after all. It would have done nothing for either of us. And in the end, I hadn't needed to show her anything. I was only showing myself." p 67

One pattern that I noticed in her life is that if a job wasn't a good fit for her, she would find a new job. She would reflect about what change she wanted to bring and would find a job that would serve her purpose. I am in a situation right now where I am really pondering what I want to become. I love teaching. I know that I have a passion for it, and that I am pretty good at it. I also know that I want to be a part of a positive change. I have goals that I want to see accomplished and I need to figure out what path I should take to best help make changes. Should I go back to school and possibly have a bigger impact? Keep being a teacher and make smaller changes? What is the most practical for my family? Anyway, I'm blabbering here but you get the picture.

I really loved how open she was about being a working mom. How she would set boundaries for herself and her employers about getting home by a certain time each night, and being flexible so that she could attend her daughters school functions.

Here are some other quotes I loved:

“You can't make decisions based on fear and the possibility of what might happen.”

"One of the lessons that I grew up with was to always stay true to yourself and never let what somebody else says distract you from your goals. And so when I hear about negative and false attacks, I really don't invest any energy in them, because I know who I am."

“We should always have three friends in our lives-one who walks ahead who we look up to and follow; one who walks beside us, who is with us every step of our journey; and then, one who we reach back for and bring along after we've cleared the way.”

"When they go low, we go high.”

“For me, becoming isn’t about arriving somewhere or achieving a certain aim. I see it instead as forward motion, a means of evolving, a way to reach continuously toward a better self. The journey doesn’t end.” 

“Friendships between women, as any woman will tell you, are built of a thousand small kindnesses... swapped back and forth and over again.”