Michelle Obama just finished speaking. I’ve never heard her speak to a crowd before, so I came in not really knowing what to expect.

She knocked my socks off.

As she reflected over her life and the life of her husband, she took a single, powerful lesson from their experiences as individuals and together — that “the American Dream endures.”

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…

My dad was our rock. Although he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in his early thirties, he was our provider, our champion, our hero. As he got sicker, it got harder for him to walk. It took him longer to get dressed in the morning. But if he was in pain, he never let on…. he just woke up a little earlier and worked a little harder.

He and my mom poured everything they had into me and [her brother] Craig. It was the greatest gift a child can receive: never doubting for a single minute that you’re loved and cherished and have a place in this world. And thanks to their faith and hard work, we were both able to go on to college.

So I know firsthand from their lives and mine that the American Dream endures…

As our friendship grew and I learned more about Barack, he introduced me to the work he’d done when he first moved to Chicago after college. Instead of heading to Wall Street, Barack had gone to work in neighborhoods devastated when steel plants shut down and jobs dried up. And he’d been invited back to speak to people from those neighborhoods about how to rebuild their community.

The people gathered together that day were ordinary folks, doing the best they could to live a good life. They were parents living from paycheck to paycheck, grandparents trying to get by on a fixed income, men frustrated that they couldn’t support their families after their jobs disappeared. Those folks weren’t asking for a handout or a shortcut. They were ready to work. They wanted to contribute. They believed, like you and I believe, that America should be a place where you can make it if you try. Barack stood up that day and spoke words that have stayed with me ever since. He talked about the world as it is and the world as it should be. And he said that too often we accept the distance between the two and settle for the world as it is, even when it doesn’t reflect our values and aspirations.

But he reminded us that we know what our world should look like. We know what fairness and justice and opportunity look like. And he urged us to believe in ourselves, to find the strength within ourselves to strive for the world as it should be…

We have an obligation to fight for the world as it should be. That is the thread that connects our hearts. That is the thread that runs through my journey and Barack’s journey and so many other improbable journeys that have brought us here tonight, where the current of history meets this new tide of hope.

That is why I love this country.

UPDATE (11PM): I’ve added the video of her speech to this post.

UPDATE (8:30AM, Aug. 26): After Michelle spoke, there was a charming moment where the two Obama children came on stage to chat with their father via video link. Here’s the video of that moment: