Michelle Obama: Mom First, Political Wife Second

Obama began with a story she rarely tells in public. She described what it was like deciding whether to go back to work after having her second child, Sasha.

"Every minute after I had my first child I questioned my decisions," Obama said as women in the audience nodded along. One day she would love work. The next day she would feel like quitting.

She told of interviewing for a new job when Sasha was just 4 months old. She didn't think she wanted the job, so she tried to sabotage the interview by bringing the baby along, nursing Sasha just before the interview and demanding a high salary.

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She got the job. But she struggled with the balance, she said. She still does, saying she worries about her children every day.

"We've been told we can have it all. The truth of the matter is that you can't. You can't have it all at the same time."

Obama said her husband gets it.

"He's watched my struggle and the pain that I have had as a woman."

Obama said her support for her husband "comes straight from my motherhood bones".

Generation Next

Obama also said the nation is too cynical and afraid, and she worries about the next generation.

"We still harbor a level of meanness here in this society that is unhealthy. … We've come to the point where mean is a character trait that we laud. We mistake meanness with toughness. I'm working so hard to teach them not to be mean girls," she said of her daughters.

Obama accused her husband's rivals of using fear to make political attacks and said Americans have a "veil of impossibility" hanging over their heads.

"In America, we spend more time talking about what can't get done, what is impossible. … We pass that on to our children. And we're creating a generation of doubters … kids that are timid."

"I don't want that for my girls," she added.

Her girls are back in Chicago, staying with Michelle Obama's 70-year-old mother.

"There's nothing like grandma," Obama said.