Former first lady Michelle Obama has always had sage advice to share in speeches; in her best-selling book, Becoming; and now, in a new personal essay in People. In honor of Mother’s Day, Obama penned a deeply personal essay in which she describes the important lessons her own mother, Marian Robinson, passed onto her.

“My mother is a woman who chooses her words carefully. She’ll sometimes speak in clipped sentences, her wisdom packed into short bursts and punctuated with an infectious smile or a wry laugh. It’s a style that makes her a favorite of everyone she meets—a sweet, witty companion who doesn’t need the limelight,” Obama wrote.

Obama added that as she grew older, she realized just how important that manner of conversation really was and how it truly reflected her mother’s parenting style. “Because when it came to raising her kids, my mom knew that her voice was less important than allowing me to use my own,” she wrote.

According to Obama, that meant her mother “listened a lot more than she lectured” when answering all the questions she threw her mother’s way.

“Why did we have to eat eggs for breakfast? Why do people need jobs? Why are the houses bigger in other neighborhoods? She didn’t chide me if I scrapped with some of the neighbor kids or challenged my ornery grandfather when I thought he was being a little too ornery,” Obama wrote. “She listened intently to the lunchtime conversations I had with my schoolmates over bologna sandwiches and nodded patiently along to tales of my contentious piano lessons with my great aunt Robbie.”

Obama continued that in today’s world, it may be easy to see her mother’s actions as “negligent” because she allowed her children to “rule the roost.” But, she noted, the reality was far from that.

“She and my father, Fraser, were wholly invested in their children, pouring a deep and durable foundation of goodness and honesty, of right and wrong, into my brother and me. After that, they simply let us be ourselves,” she wrote.

Obama added that now, as a mother of two nearly grown women, she sees just how important that freedom is.

“… I see now how important that kind of freedom is for all children, particularly for girls with flames of their own—flames the world might try to dim,” she wrote. “It’s up to us, as mothers and mother-figures, to give the girls in our lives the kind of support that keeps their flame lit and lifts up their voices—not necessarily with our own words, but by letting them find the words themselves.”

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