Michelle Obama Reveals Why She Skipped Donald Trump's Inauguration as Rumors Swirled About Her Marriage 'Falling Apart'

Michelle Obama finally opened up about her decision to skip Donald Trump's second inauguration and step back from certain public events altogether.

After months of rumors surrounding scandal and marital issues between the former first lady and former President Barack Obama, she said skipping the event was simply "the choice that was right for me."

"People couldn't believe that I was saying no for any other reason, they had to assume that my marriage was falling apart," Michelle said about the headlines surrounding the inauguration and her husband's solo outings on her "IMO" podcast. "It took everything in my power to not do the thing that was perceived as right, but do the things that was right for me, that was a hard thing for me to do."

"It started with not having anything to wear," she explained. "I was like, if I'm not going to do this thing, I got to tell my team, I don't even want to have a dress ready, right? Because it's so easy to just say let me do the right thing."

Michelle explained how attending events without her husband, or vice versa, were her efforts to practice the "art of saying no" when it felt necessary.

"It's a muscle that you have to build," she told her listeners. "And I think we suffered, because it's almost like we started training late in life to build that muscle, right? I am just now starting to build it."

"I want our daughters, I want the young women out there… I want my girls to start practicing different strategies for saying no," the mother-of-two continued. "After all that I've done in this world, if I am still showing them that I have to keep- I still have to show people that I love my country, that I'm doing the right thing, that I am always setting, going high all the time, even in the face of a lot of hypocrisy and contradiction, all I'm doing is keeping that crazy bar that our mothers and grandmothers set for us."

The former first lady also said she’s been digging deep in therapy to find out how her experience in the White House affected her.

"We made it through. We got out alive," the 61-year-old shared. "I hope we made the country proud. My girls, thank God, are whole. But what happened to me?"

"Going through therapy is getting me to look at the fact that maybe, maybe finally I'm good enough," she added.