Former first lady Michelle Obama talked about backing away and spending time for herself on a podcast released Tuesday, solving her recent absences from political events and rumors of marital troubles.

Sharing about her life eight years out of the White House with two adult children, Obama said on the “Work in Progress” podcast with actress Sophia Bush that she now has the opportunity to handl her own calendar and can now make “a choice for myself.”

“I could have made a lot of these decisions years ago, but I didn’t give myself that freedom,” Obama said.

She added: “And now that’s gone. And so now I have to look at my — I get to look at my calendar, which I did this year, was a real big example of me, myself looking at something that I was supposed to do — you know, without naming names — and I chose to do what was best for me, not what I had to do, not what I thought other people wanted me to do.”
The former First Lady notably didn’t attend President Donald Trump’s second inauguration, as well as the state funeral of former President Jimmy Carter in January.

“I still find time to you know, give speeches, to be out there in the world, to work on projects. I still care about girls’ education. We, you know, the library is opening in a year from now. Certain things I am and am not doing with the library,” Obama said.

She shared: “That’s the thing that we as women, I think we struggle with like disappointing people. I mean so much so that this year people were, you know — they couldn’t even fathom that I was making a choice for myself that they had to assume that my husband and I are divorcing.”