I've always been a closet jock, but when I got married and had kids, that fell by the wayside.

One of the things I've done personally is bring my girlfriends into my health and fitness journeys.

It is our fundamental belief in the power of hope that has allowed us to rise above the voices of doubt and division, of anger and fear that we have faced in our own lives and in the life of America.

You can be a good mom and still work out, get your rest, have a career - or not. My mother encouraged me to find that balance.

I believe that each of us-no matter what our age or background or walk of life-each of us has something to contribute to the life of this nation.

I had the honor of meeting a young Pakistani woman named Malala Yousafzai, who was shot and nearly killed just for trying to go to school. I also heard about how nearly 300 girls in Nigeria were kidnapped from their school dorms in the middle of the night. There are girls like this in every corner of the globe. In fact, there are more than 62 million girls worldwide not attending school, and that's an outrage.

In fact, in the last job I had before coming to the White House - I remember this clearly - I was on maternity leave with Sasha, still trying to figure out what to do with my life, and I got a call for an interview for this position, a senior position at the hospitals. And I thought, okay, here we go. So I had to scramble to look for babysitting, and couldn't find one.