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Michelle Obama opened up about the racism she endured as first lady. It's heartbreaking.

“The shards that cut me the deepest were the ones that intended to cut."

History will remember Michelle Obama as a bold, resilient, and glass-ceiling-shattering pioneer in the White House. But behind closed doors, Obama silently wrestled with painful, unique hurdles literally no one else on Earth has experienced: being a black first lady of America.

During a candid discussion at the Women's Foundation of Colorado's (WFCO) 30th anniversary fundraiser on July 25, Obama opened up about the eight years of racist attacks she endured as first lady.

When WFCO President and CEO Lauren Casteel asked Obama about which falling glass shard from the ceiling she shattered hurt the most, the former first lady replied that it was the targeted comments — rhetoric referring to her as an "ape" and discussing her body — that were the toughest to shrug off, the Denver Post reported.



“The shards that cut me the deepest were the ones that intended to cut,” Obama said.

“Knowing that after eight years of working really hard for this country, there are still people who won’t see me for what I am because of my skin color.”


Photo by Jason Bahr/Getty Images for The Women's Foundation of Colorado.

While Obama earned relatively high approval ratings among Americans as a whole, she still had to tread through a seemingly unending onslaught of racist dog whistles and overtly bigoted attacks in her eight years as first lady.

There was that eyebrow-raising New Yorker cover depicting her with an Afro and machine gun, the racist (transphobic, misogynistic) comparison to Melania Trump, and the time shortly after taking office that a top Google Images search result for "Michelle Obama" was an image altered so she resembled a monkey.

But the bigotry, however daunting, never kept her from fighting onward.

“I want to live in a world that cares for its women,” Obama said at the fundraiser. “I hope that we can create a world where women are safe. At the core, I want girls to feel safety as they move about the world.”

Obama may no longer be America's first lady, but it's reassuring to know she's still going high — even when they go low.

A pitbull stares at the window, looking for the mailman.


Dogs are naturally driven by a sense of purpose and a need for belonging, which are all part of their instinctual pack behavior. When a dog has a job to do, it taps into its needs for structure, purpose, and the feeling of contributing to its pack, which in a domestic setting translates to its human family.

But let’s be honest: In a traditional domestic setting, dogs have fewer chores they can do as they would on a farm or as part of a rescue unit. A doggy mom in Vancouver Island, Canada had fun with her dog’s purposeful uselessness by sharing the 5 “chores” her pitbull-Lab mix does around the house.

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A nasty note gets a strong response.

We've all seen it while cruising for spots in a busy parking lot: A person parks their whip in a disabled spot, then they walk out of their car and look totally fine. It's enough to make you want to vomit out of anger, especially because you've been driving around for what feels like a million years trying to find a parking spot.

You're obviously not going to confront them about it because that's all sorts of uncomfortable, so you think of a better, way less ballsy approach: leaving a passive aggressive note on their car's windshield.

Satisfied, you walk back to your car feeling proud of yourself for telling that liar off and even more satisfied as you walk the additional 100 steps to get to the store from your lame parking spot all the way at the back of the lot. But did you ever stop and wonder if you told off the wrong person?

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Innovation

A student accidentally created a rechargeable battery that could last 400 years

"This thing has been cycling 10,000 cycles and it’s still going." ⚡️⚡️

There's an old saying that luck happens when preparation meets opportunity.

There's no better example of that than a 2016 discovery at the University of California, Irvine, by doctoral student Mya Le Thai. After playing around in the lab, she made a discovery that could lead to a rechargeable battery that could last up to 400 years. That means longer-lasting laptops and smartphones and fewer lithium ion batteries piling up in landfills.

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Health

8 nontraditional empathy cards that are unlike any you've ever seen. They're perfect!

Because sincerity and real talk are important during times of medical crisis.

True compassion.

When someone you know gets seriously ill, it's not always easy to come up with the right words to say or to find the right card to give.

Emily McDowell — a former ad agency creative director and the woman behind the Los Angeles-based greeting card and textile company Emily McDowell Studio — knew all too well what it was like to be on the receiving end of uncomfortable sentiments.

At the age of 24, she was diagnosed with Stage 3 Hodgkin's lymphoma. She went into remission after nine months of chemo and has remained cancer-free since, but she received her fair share of misplaced, but well-meaning, wishes before that.

On her webpage introducing the awesome cards you're about to see, she shared,

"The most difficult part of my illness wasn't losing my hair, or being erroneously called 'sir' by Starbucks baristas, or sickness from chemo. It was the loneliness and isolation I felt when many of my close friends and family members disappeared because they didn't know what to say or said the absolute wrong thing without realizing it."

Her experience inspired Empathy Cards — not quite "get well soon" and not quite "sympathy," they were created so "the recipients of these cards [can] feel seen, understood, and loved."

Scroll down to read these sincere, from-the-heart, and incredibly realistic sentiments.

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Health

This woman's powerful 'before and after' photos crush myths about body positivity

"Body positivity is about saying that you are more than a body and your self-worth is not reliant on your beauty."



Michelle Elman, a body positivity coach, helps people who are struggling to find confidence in their own skin.

After persevering through numerous medical conditions and surgeries in her own life, Elman realized a few years ago that body positivity wasn't just about size or weight. Things like scars, birthmarks, and anything else that makes us feel different of self-conscious have to be a part of the conversation, and she tries to make the movement accessible to everyone.

Sharing her own journey has been one of her most effective teaching tools.

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via wakaflockafloccar / TikTok

It's amazing to consider just how quickly the world has changed over the past 11 months. If you were to have told someone in February 2020 that the entire country would be on some form of lockdown, nearly everyone would be wearing a mask, and half a million people were going to die due to a virus, no one would have believed you.

Yet, here we are.

PPE masks were the last thing on Leah Holland of Georgetown, Kentucky's mind on March 4, 2020, when she got a tattoo inspired by the words of a close friend.

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