Quarantine, racial strife, Trump have Michelle Obama feeling down

Former First Lady Michelle Obama said she is suffering from "low-grade depression" from coronavirus quarantine, racial strife in the United States and the "hypocrisy" of the Trump administration.

Obama made the remarks in the latest episode of "The Michelle Obama Podcast" released on Spotify on Wednesday.

"I'm waking up in the middle of the night because I'm worrying about something or there's a heaviness," the 56-year-old former First Lady said.

"I try to make sure I get a workout in, although there have been periods throughout this quarantine, where I just have felt too low," she said.

Obama said she has been going through "those emotional highs and lows that I think everybody feels, where you just don't feel yourself."

"These are not, they are not fulfilling times, spiritually," she said. "I know that I am dealing with some form of low-grade depression.

"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."

Michelle Obama and Barack Obama, America's first black president, took up residence in Washington after he left the White House in January 2017.

She also said it is "exhausting" to be "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 it has led to a weight that I haven't felt in my life, in a while," she said.

Obama said it was important to remember that "we've been through tough times in this nation" before.

"We are in a unique moment in history," she said. "We are living through something that no one in our lifetimes has lived through."

© 2020 AFP