Former first Lady Michelle Obama knows not everyone is motivated by her famous quote from her 2016 DNC speech. In fact, she knows some voters have been downright frustrated with her call to "go high."

In her new book, "The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times," Obama acknowledges a generational rift in views over the pace of societal change and political action, in addition to opening up about other deeply personal details on how she's coped with changes – both in public, and in private.

Generational shifts are a theme throughout the former first lady's latest book, which strikes a different tone from her 2018 book, "Becoming." In her first memoir, Obama peeled back the layers of her and her family's personal story, giving the world an intimate view. While "The Light We Carry" includes plenty of personal details, it serves as more of a guidebook in which Obama uses her own lived experiences to answer questions many people ask about life, including how to have a strong partnership and how to let your children become confident in their own abilities.

Whether it's the pandemic, racial injustice, or economic uncertainty, Obama said the past few years have been a collective struggle for many, and she's received lots of questions from people searching for ways to keep their hope alive. Obama spoke with NPR about her marriage and what advice she might give those trying to figure out a partnership today, how her relationship with her daughters has evolved as they've become adults and what "when they go low, we go high" looks like in action.

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VIDEO CHAPTERS
0:00 - “The Light We Carry” compared to her previous book “Becoming”
3:05 - On sharing from her family’s personal lives
5:18 - “Marriage is never 50/50”
8:01 - On being a mother to adult daughters
11:07 - On teaching her daughters to “feel the power of our competence”
13:10 - Barack Obama texts his daughters about earthquake preparedness
16:08 - On how hard it is to parent without support of family
20:21 - On the pressure of being the first or only Black woman in certain places
23:11 - There are no shortcuts to showing up as your authentic self
25:29 - How does “going high” square with a world in need of urgent change
29:01 - Making change is a “slog” and a “marathon”
30:47 - The big impact of the small act of voting