Michelle Tooker asked Michelle Obama:

What advice would you give to someone considering a career swerve? Were there ever moments when you second-guessed your decision and how did you handle those doubts? PS - Loved, loved, loved your memoir. Your experiences coping with the loss of Suzanne, and how it pushed you to seek more joy, resonated with me as I grieve the sudden loss (at 33) of one of my best friends. Thank you!

Michelle Obama I’m so sorry for your loss, Michelle. It's interesting you mention Suzanne while asking about career swerves because losing her was certainly one of the major events that caused me to reckon with my path. Suzanne was a free spirit; I was a box-checker. But we were dear, dear friends. She represented a part of me that was always there but I’d usually ignored or pushed aside in my focus on sticking to the path I thought the world was telling me to pursue. Losing her at a young age was absolutely devastating. And her death, coupled with the loss of my father shortly thereafter, caused me to really rethink that path I’d been pursuing. I was sitting in a sky-rise office, doing legal work that wasn’t fulfilling to me, and I couldn’t help but ask—what’s it all for?

Of course, you don’t need to suffer a major loss to prompt a reappraisal of your career. Almost everyone I know has switched paths somewhere along the line. So what I’d say is that reevaluating your career is good. Doing so shouldn’t be a cause for anxiety—it’s a way you can reaffirm who you want to be.

If there’s some part of you that’s questioning your career, it’s important to listen to that. Our hearts sometimes know ourselves better than our minds do. For me, that meant pursuing a life of public service—a path I’ve been able to maintain since that major swerve. But even since I made that change, I’ve shifted roles and jobs as my life demanded it. There are times when you can work 60 or 70 hour weeks for less pay, and there are times when you may need to make more money or be home more consistently for your family. Knowing that at the outset—that any career change will probably be followed by more changes, in varying degrees—can help you keep things in perspective if and when you start to re-evaluate things once again.

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