Chapter 14
My husband has always said that all politics is personal.
This is evident on the international stage.
The partners of world leaders share an understanding because of our common role, and protocol often requires hosting each other for anything from a casual tea at home to an elaborate state visit.
Trips abroad weren’t always easy given my teaching schedule, but I made them a priority and was rewarded with a number of close relationships.
Spending time with fellow First Spouses provided me with an education in the histories and traditions of other cultures, as well as in human nature.
Rania and I bonded over advocacy for the education of all children.
She told me about her country’s successes finding space for migrants at Jordanian schools.
When hundreds of thousands of Syrians arrived in Jordan, fleeing ISIS and civil war, some schools became so crowded that there weren’t enough places to put students.
Maha Salim Al-Ashqar, principal of a girls’ primary school there, was not daunted.
As I understood it, she would take any girl who could bring her own chair, and the next day, there was a line of women standing there holding chairs to donate for the little girls.
On her next visit, in July of that year, Beatriz said, “I want you to show me something that nobody else sees.” It was a fun request. She was a professor, so I called up the Library of Congress and said, “Let’s wow her.”
Beatriz seemed genuinely moved by the gesture.
She spent time asking questions and discovering the origin and history of every piece.
The staff was delighted, of course. This was their forte.
Carla Hayden and her librarians went above and beyond in displaying their deep knowledge about the history of Mexico.
Beatriz, who knew I taught writing, hosted me for a celebration of the written word.
The event touched my heart. In my remarks, I said, “Art is powerful. Poetry and prose, dance and music—they can unite us across time, and languages, and borders. They show us that our differences are precious and our similarities infinite.”
International summits were often a time for First Spouse gatherings.
In October 2021, during the G20 Summit in Rome, I had tea with Maria Serenella Cappello, the wife of Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi, while he and Joe discussed transatlantic security.
She kept a low public profile but had agreed to see me, perhaps because she has a degree in English literature and knew we’d have plenty to talk about.
We had interpreters, but she didn’t need one for our visit.
She understood a lot of English, and right away, we clicked.
It might have been that we were both in our seventies, but in no time, we were just two women swapping stories.
She laughed charmingly. She was so open and vulnerable.
I asked her if her husband danced.
She said he “danced like a horse,” but she then corrected herself: “I meant, like a bear.”
I said, “Well, then my husband dances like the horse.”
That G20 trip to Rome was also the first time I met France’s First Lady Brigitte Macron.
We shared champagne and french fries and talked as if we’d known each other forever.
She grew up with three sisters, and she behaved toward me with as much care as if we were family.
When our lunch concluded, I walked her over to the press and described us as “two friends together, just like sisters!”
Every time I saw Brigitte, I liked her even more.
When the Macrons were in DC for the state visit in December 2022, I took Brigitte to a museum of language called Planet Word.
Alongside a visiting class from a French immersion school, we listened to beautiful poems by Poet Laureate of the United States Ada Limón and former National Student Poet Maya Salameh.
I thanked everyone, and Brigitte offered brief remarks in English.
She told a parable of two beggars: One holds up a sign that reads blind; the other, the spring is arriving and i will never see it.
The second beggar, she explained to the students, received far more charity from passersby, because with his poetry, he was able to help them empathize with his experience: The world will be blooming into color and light, and this man will be left in the dark.
She ended her talk by saying, “We are friends,” and she took my hand.
“We are friends,” I said, holding her hand as we smiled out at the bright students who’d come to the museum that day to learn about poetry.
Brigitte behaved toward me with great kindness at every turn.
I arrived in Paris for the 2024 Summer Olympics opening ceremonies in the middle of a torrential downpour.
Before I had to face the public, Brigitte called me into a room she’d saved just for me, and brought in a hair dryer so I could dry off and fix my makeup before I had to greet everyone else.
At the reopening of the Cathedral of Notre Dame in December 2024, after its restoration following the terrible fire that partly destroyed it in 2019, I arrived at my seat and was pleased to find that Brigitte would be by my side.
Before she arrived, the US president-elect leaned over to speak to me.
“I had a good meeting with your husband in the Oval Office,” he said.
“Yes,” I said, “because you’re both talkers.”
We both laughed. Cameras clicked. The next day, he posted a photo of us as an ad for his cologne, Fight Fight Fight, priced at $199, tagline: “A fragrance your enemies can’t resist!”
Really?
In May 2022, I took a four-day trip alone to Eastern Europe to call attention to the humanitarian crisis caused by Russia’s Ukraine invasion.
On that trip, Romania’s First Spouse Carmen Iohannis and I visited a school in Bucharest attended by a group of Ukrainian refugee children.
The teacher had written a welcome message to us on the blackboard, and we got to interact with the children around a lesson.
Afterward, Carmen cooked me an amazing lunch at her home—Italian food, in honor of my heritage—and then took me for a walk in the gardens by her home, where we talked about everything from our exercise regimens to Shakespeare.
At a White House reception that same month to mark the bicentennial of the Greek War of Independence, I met Mareva Grabowski-Mitsotakis, First Lady of Greece.
She had included her daughters, Sofia and Dafni, in our meeting, so Mareva and I bonded as mothers.
I later sent cookies to Dafni’s Yale dorm her freshman year to help make her feel welcome in the United States.
Mareva and I would seek each other out during conferences or meetings, even if only for a quick hello and hug.
She invited me to visit her in Greece in the summer, but the timing never worked out.
I traveled to Africa five times as Second Lady.
In 2010, I accompanied Joe to Kenya, where I visited a boarding school for orphans while Joe met with the country’s leaders to discuss their shared pursuit of peace in the region.
Touring the impoverished informal settlement Kibera, I became friendly with a tour guide named Aliyah.
When I went back to Kenya many years later, we met up in Kibera.
Her toddler had become a teenager, and she had another child, age two.
Our reunion was warm, and I was thrilled to see how well she seemed.
To me, showing up matters, and showing up again matters more.
I was lucky enough to return to Africa as First Lady in February 2023, bringing my granddaughter Naomi on a trip to Kenya and Namibia (which no American First Lady had visited before).
The prior December, I’d hosted twenty-one spouses to presidents of sub-Saharan African nations at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts to discuss global cancer prevention and treatment.
That was part of where my great affection for Namibia’s First Lady Monica Geingos began.
She was warm and friendly, and I truly valued her friendship.
There were a lot of reasons to go—USAID, the education programs, and using soft diplomacy to remind countries that the United States is a valuable friend.
During Australia’s October 2023 state visit, I was speaking with Jodie Haydon, partner of the Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, about how our feet were killing us.
There had been a great deal of standing and walking that day.
I knew that Jodie had walked from Blair House and was going to walk back that night, so before she left, I made sure to track down some sneakers for her to wear home.
It’s just across the street, but in high heels at the end of a long day, that walk can feel like miles.
Joe and I truly enjoyed their visit to the White House.
The day before the state dinner, we did the formal gift exchange and the signing of the official book, and then we sat in the Green Room for a meal together.
Because they were English speakers, there was no need for interpreters, so it was just the four of us.
It was my first time meeting them. Conversation flowed.
They were easy and they seemed like such a good couple.
In November 2025, I was delighted by the news that they’d gotten married.
When I first visited First Lady Sophie Grégoire Trudeau in Canada in 2023, she threw a special lunch for me—just the two of us, with flowers and candles—at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa.
Sophie was fun and energetic, and I was impressed by the way she was working through her writing and speaking to destigmatize mental illness.
So when in April 2024 she published a powerful and inspirational memoir called Closer Together, I wanted to help her in her work as much as I could.
The White House lawyers felt that it would be a violation of the rules against commercial promotion if I threw Sophie a book party, but I invited her to stay as my guest in the Queens’ Bedroom, my favorite guest suite.
I also stopped by her book talk at Vital Voices Global Headquarters to give some introductory remarks before Huma Abedin, a political force in her own right, took over as moderator for the evening.
I stayed to listen to Sophie’s sage advice on the issue of mental health.
Sheikha Moza of Qatar I found to be both one of the most glamorous women in the world and a powerhouse when it comes to providing education to children in need through her foundation Education Above All.
In December 2024, Ashley and I—along with my friend Ghada Irani, whom I met through the White House Historical Association—were honored to attend the royal wedding of Sheikha Moza’s youngest son at Al Wajba Palace, to which I wore a long beaded Oscar de la Renta gown that shaded from pale blue to a dark floral, as if it represented the sky and the earth.
During that trip, I also had the opportunity to visit hospitals and look at different health care systems. What the sheikha has achieved in women’s health is both inspiring and impressive.
I can see why so many doctors are gravitating toward the research being done and the progress being achieved in Qatar.
One of my favorite moments with a First Couple took place in July 2021, when Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel and her husband, chemistry professor Joachim Sauer, came to a small dinner in the Blue Room.
Chancellor Merkel grew up in East Germany—as did Joachim, by whom she seemed perennially amused.
You could tell the two of them had fun. They were always together. It was a true partnership.
Before the dinner, Angela and Joachim joined Joe and me for cocktails upstairs.
Chancellor Merkel said, “Do you still have that Monet?”
“I don’t have a Monet,” I said. “I think I would know if I had a Monet.”
She said, “Well, Joachim and I were here once and President Trump said, ‘Do you want to come see my Monet?’ ” He’d showed it to them. I hadn’t even known such a thing was in the building.
So the four of us went on an expedition.
Sure enough, in the room off of our bedroom, the big hallway, we had two couches facing each other, and then chairs, and then a big palladium window.
The plaques underneath the paintings in our room were small and scratched, and I never looked at them closely.
There it was: Morning on the Seine, Good Weather, a gold-framed oil painting of the river surrounded by trees, the light soft.
I later learned that two weeks after the death of JFK, Jackie Kennedy chose the painting to be a part of the White House’s permanent collection in honor of her husband.
She put it in the Green Room, President Kennedy’s favorite part of the State Floor.
That night we discovered it, the four of us—two world leaders and their partners, and yet also just two couples having drinks during an impromptu house tour—stood back and admired this peaceful, luminous painting belonging to the American people and hanging on the White House wall decade after decade. Our Monet.