“I felt lost and alone and I felt like I failed," she tells ABC News.
Michelle Obama is opening up like never before.
In an exclusive interview with ABC News anchor Robin Roberts, the 54-year-old former first lady reveals that she had a miscarriage about 20 years ago and used In vitro fertilization to conceive her two daughters -- Malia, 20, and Sasha, 17 -- with her husband, President Barack Obama.
“I felt lost and alone and I felt like I failed because I didn't know how common miscarriages were because we don't talk about them,” Obama tells Roberts in a sneak peek of Becoming Michelle: A First Lady’s Journey with Robin Roberts, which will air Nov. 11 at 9 p.m. ET on ABC. “We sit in our own pain, thinking that somehow we’re broken."
"So that's one of the reasons why I think it's important to talk to young mothers about the fact that miscarriages happen,” she adds.
While trying to start a family, Obama became aware of the fact that "the biological clock is real because egg production is limited."
"I realized that as I was 34 and 35 that we had to do IVF," she says. "I think it's the worst thing that we do to each other as women, not share the truth about our bodies and how they work and how they don't work."
In excerpts from her memoir, Becoming, published by ABC News, Obama speaks about her beginnings with her husband of 26 years. The two met while she was his adviser at the law firm Sidley Austin LLP in Chicago, Illinois. Though she initially wanted to keep their relationship in the friend zone, that went out the window when he kissed her for the first time.
“As soon as I allowed myself to feel anything for Barack, the feelings came rushing -- a toppling blast of lust, gratitude, fulfillment, wonder,” she writes of her now-husband, 57.
It wasn't always easy, though. Obama reveals that she and her husband sought marriage counseling, something she writes was her "pivot point" and "moment of self-arrest."
Counseling, she tells Roberts, became "one of those ways where we learned how to talk out our differences.”
“I know too many young couples who struggle and think that somehow there's something wrong with them. And I want them to know that Michelle and Barack Obama, who have a phenomenal marriage and who love each other, we work on our marriage," she says. "And we get help with our marriage when we need it.”
In her book, Obama also opens up about her husband's presidential run in 2007. The election was challenging, especially due to the fact that people characterized her as unpatriotic and "an angry black woman."
“I was female, black and strong, which to certain people... translated only to ‘angry.’ It was another damaging cliché, one that’s been forever used to sweep minority women to the perimeter of every room," she writes. "I was now starting to actually feel a bit angry, which then made me feel worse, as if I were fulfilling some prophecy laid out for me by the haters.”
In large part due to "the ugliness of the campaign," Obama was turned off to politics for good and became unwilling to ever run for office.
“Public judgment sweeps in to fill any void... I knew that I would never allow myself to get that banged up again,” she writes. “I’ve never been a fan of politics, and my experience over the last 10 years has done little to change that. I continue to be put off by the nastiness.”
Obama also uses her book to speak to the false accusations about her husband -- namely the "birther" movement and questions to his patriotism -- and how then-civilian Donald Trump egged them on.
“[The accusations were] crazy and mean-spirited... its underlying bigotry and xenophobia hardly concealed," she says in her book. "But it was also dangerous, deliberately meant to stir up the wingnuts and kooks.”
“What if someone with an unstable mind loaded a gun and drove to Washington? What if that person went looking for our girls? Donald Trump, with his loud and reckless innuendos, was putting my family’s safety at risk," she continues, calling out the president. "And for this, I’d never forgive him.”
Becoming is set to be released on Nov. 13. In the meantime, watch the video below for more with Obama:
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