We were so young, so in love, and so in debt.

It's been so important that the Chamber of Commerce, for example, has hosted hiring fairs that are specifically targeted to military communities.

And I come here as a daughter, raised on the South Side of Chicago - by a father who was a blue-collar city worker and a mother who stayed at home with my brother and me.

The issues facing working women and their families are closest to my heart. I decided to focus intently on the challenges military wives face because they juggle the same pressures as their nonmilitary peers, all while coping as single parents while their loved ones are overseas. I wanted to help make their voices heard.

My sense is that being a First Lady is a full-time job, but I'll know more when the time comes.

We're all bombarded with so many dietary messages that it's hard to find time to sort through all this information, but we do have time to take a look at our kids' plates.

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.