How Michelle Obama Captures the Very Best of Women

"Adieu best of wives and best of women." — Alexander Hamilton's farewell letter to his wife, Eliza, in 1804 shortly before battling Aaron Burr.

On Jan. 10, 2017, President Barack Obama addressed the nation for the last time. He said many things, but the moment that brought down the house was when he said this: "Michelle LaVaughn Robinson, girl of the South Side — for the past 25 years, you have not only been my wife and mother of my children, you have been my best friend." He went onto praise the first lady by saying, "You took on a role you didn't ask for and you made it your own, with grace and with grit and with style and good humor. You made the White House a place that belongs to everybody. And the new generation sets its sights higher because it has you as a role model. So you have made me proud. And you have made the country proud." He couldn't even get the whole paragraph out in one go. After each and every sentence, there was a thundering applause.

It was the desire to spin together an end-of-an-era praise song for Michelle Obama that was at the heart of my editing this new anthology, The Meaning of Michelle. In the book, I asked 16 of my favorite writers and thinkers — from Ava Duvernay to chef Marcus Samuelsson, from academic Brittney Cooper aka "Professor Crunk" to everyone's favorite bad feminist, Roxane Gay — to write about the first lady and how her journey and her choices have changed our own.

One of my favorite essays in the book is by Phillipa Soo. Phillipa is now starring in the Broadway-bound musical Amelie. But at the time she was still in her Tony-nominated role of Eliza in the iconic musical Hamilton. Before Hamilton went off to duel Aaron Burr on that fateful morning, he wrote a letter to his wife, Eliza. In it, he bid "adieu" to the woman he called "the best of wives and the best of women." I remember sitting on a couch with a cup of tea, talking to Phillipa about what that phrase meant. What does it mean to be the best of wives and best of women? What did it mean in Hamilton's age? What does it mean now? Our journeys are our own to create, but the institutions that we travel through are well worn paths. We get an education, of some sort, to some degree. We get jobs of one sort or another. We fall in love and most of us will get married. (Almost 80 percent of American women will get married at some point in their lives.) Through that lens, the question of what does it mean to be the best of wives and the best of women while antiquated in its language has, at its heart, real bite. We live these lives and somehow, we have to figure it out.

One of the things I realized as I worked on this anthology is that first ladies continue to fascinate because the very nature of their job is to model womanhood in a public way. It may not be anybody's business what you or I serve for dinner or how we celebrate an anniversary or how we care for children or an aging parent. But when someone steps into the first lady role, that kind of personal business becomes not just news, but a kind of public textbook that comes to define a place and time. This is how Betty Ford handled breast cancer. This is how Hillary Clinton cared for her beloved mother. This is how Michelle Obama raised Malia and Sasha.

I expect that we'll be writing the story of Michelle Obama's legacy, in many ways, in the months ahead, especially as the differences between her and the incoming first lady are so stark. But I will say that one of the most powerful elements of her legacy is how we got to see on a public stage, how she was raised by two hard-working blue collar parents. How she then, in turn, raised herself through marriage and motherhood to be a woman who cultivated both wisdom and a joyful sense of humor, a balance between what she gave herself, what she gave her family and what she gave the world.

If in the months ahead, you find yourself inspired and thankful for Michelle Obama's service to this country over the last eight years, I would urge you to make a donation — no matter how small — to the initiative she started at the White House called Let Girls Learn.gov. Sixty-two million girls, in countries all around the world, are not in school. The impact of Let Girls Learn is immediate and powerful. A 12-year-old girl in Pakistan named Sana Sufiyan was able to quit an eight-hours-a-day job at a shoe factory and return to school full time due to the help of Let Girls Learn. Halima Robert, a 15-year-old child bride in Malawi, was able to have her marriage annulled and return to school with the help of a Let Girls Learn program that is working to dissuade families from forcing young girls into marriage.

Yesterday, I donated a $100 to Let Girls Learn as just a small thank you to Michelle Obama and all that she has inspired in my life and the life of my daughter. As she has said, "I am an example of what is possible when girls from the very beginning of their lives are loved and nurtured by the people around them." However we celebrate in the week ahead, and whatever political party we are celebrating, we can be united in this: taking some small action to uplift girls, nurturing their potential, and letting them know the power of our love.

Veronica Chambers is the editor of The Meaning of Michelle: 16 Writers on the Iconic First Lady and How Her Journey Inspires Our Own, which came out Jan. 10.