On Tuesday, Michelle Obama released her new book, Becoming, and was joined by her brother, Craig Robinson, for a live interview with Robin Roberts on Good Morning America. During the interview, she spoke about how her daughters, Malia and Sasha, endured the eight years of scrutiny while living in the White House—and the support they got from the only women in the world who understood exactly what they were going through.

“I will also say that they had support from a lot of the other former First Kids: Jenna and Barbara and Chelsea,” Obama said. “I love those girls; I will love them forever for what kind of support they provided to my daughters. They always had their backs. Somebody went after them in the press, Jenna would get in there and say something. Chelsea would send a tweet out, and that made a big difference.”

With Malia now attending Harvard and Sasha a senior at Sidwell Friends in Washington, D.C., their mother says she is proud of the women they have become: “Let me just say this out loud in public. I am so proud of those little girls. They have managed this situation with poise and grace and they are normal and kind and smart and friendly and open. Gosh, and it could’ve gone so wrong.”

Chelsea Clinton was the last child to live in the White House full-time; she was 12 years old when her father was inaugurated and subject to media attacks so intense that the Obamas seemed to do everything in their power to keep Sasha and Malia out of the public eye. Jenna and Barbara Bush were college students when George W. Bush took office, but they saw it as their duty to advise Sasha and Malia as well. When the Obamas left 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. in January 2017, Jenna and Barbara Bush wrote them a letter, much like the 2009 letter they sent them when they first moved in to the residence. The 2017 letter read, in part:

“Now you are about to join another rarified club, one of former First Children—a position you didn’t seek and one with no guidelines,” the letter reads. “But you have so much to look forward to. You will be writing the story of your lives, beyond the shadow of your famous parents, yet you will always carry with you the experiences of the past eight years.”

In her ABC interview with Roberts on Sunday and again Tuesday morning, Obama talked about the issues she had with conceiving her daughters and the fact that she and the former president eventually used I.V.F. to get pregnant. She also touched on why she decided to write about this experience, for the first time, in her book.

“Miscarriages are more common than we know,” she told Roberts. “Infertility is a common problem. But that’s the thing, we as women . . . we just don’t talk about these issues, so we deal with this stuff in isolation, and that doesn’t help. So if folks like me coming out and talking about my experiences helps give some comfort and some courage to others to come out, then I’m happy to share my story if it helps.”

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