“Marriage still ain’t equal, y’all,” Michelle Obama told the capacity crowd at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center on Saturday night. “It ain’t equal. I tell women that whole ‘you can have it all’—mmm, nope. Not at the same time—that’s a lie. It’s not always enough to lean in, because that shit doesn’t work.”

The crowd, who had gathered to see the First Lady in her new, somewhat more casual life as a private citizen, burst into laughter and applause—“shit” is definitely not something she would have said in the Blue Room. Obama cut herself off before apologizing to the children in the crowd. “I thought we were at home, y’all. I was gettin’ real comfortable up in here. Alright, I’m back now. Sometimes that stuff doesn’t work.”

Joined by her friend, the poet Elizabeth Alexander, onstage, Obama continued her Becoming book tour with a candid conversation about some of the most intimate revelations in her book, including her and Barack Obama’s experiences in marriage counseling.

“People are like, ‘Oh, why’d she talk about marriage counseling?’ I’m like, ‘Duh.’ Marriage is hard, you know. It is hard . . . I love my husband, and we have a great marriage—and we’ve had a great marriage—but marriage is hard work.” She added that she’s seen too many couples rush into marriage. “Marriage is a lot of work, and it should be. It’s two independent individuals who are trying to come together to build a life forever.” She said, too, that despite the great efforts the Obamas undertook to have children, “Kids are an interrupter; they mess it all up. Barack and I say that’s why they make ’em cute—’cause if they weren’t cute, you’d just leave ’em in a basket.”

Throughout the night, Obama stayed light and open with the audience, talking about her favorite White House moments, like when she and Malia sneaked out of the White House to see the rainbow lights on the day the Supreme Court passed marriage equality. She took time, too, to honor the late George H.W. Bush, and add that he and his family became like family to hers.

To close the night, she recounted, in tears, a day when she and her husband hosted kids at the White House: a young girl hugged the president, and told him he’d saved her life by showing he cared. She used the story to remind the adults in the room to always be careful about what they say to and how they act around the children in their lives: “That’s why Barack and I are careful about what we say, except when we are in an arena full of people.”

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