Serena Williams announced that she plans to retire from tennis in a recent Vogue essay. In that essay, the tennis phenom reflected on her career, her health challenges, and balancing her sport with her family.
Williams, 40, said that her plan to retire is focused on growing her family and not because of the near-death experience she had in giving birth to her daughter, Olympia, in 2017.
“I have never liked the word retirement. Maybe the best word to describe what I’m up to is evolution. These days, if I have to choose between building my tennis résumé and building my family, I choose the latter,” she wrote.
Serena expressed some regret that she will not surpass Margaret Court’s record of 24 Grand Slam titles. She only missed that by one. But she stressed to her readers this important fact, “I went from a C-section to a second pulmonary embolism to a grand slam final,” she wrote. “I played while breastfeeding. I played through postpartum depression. But I didn’t get there. Shoulda, woulda, coulda.”
“I didn’t show up the way I should have or could have. But I showed up 23 times, and that’s fine. Actually it’s extraordinary.”
The birth of William’s daughter included a secondary pulmonary embolism. This is a life-threatening blood clot in the lungs.
Serena knew about this danger from her past. In 2011, she suffered from her first pulmonary embolism. That battle almost put her on her death bed and she became vigilant about making sure history didn’t repeat itself.
Serena wrote in an earlier essay that Black people are almost three times more likely to die during or after childbirth.
“Many of these deaths are considered by experts to be preventable,” Williams explained. “Being heard and appropriately treated was the difference between life or death for me; I know those statistics would be different if the medical establishment listened to every Black woman’s experience.”
People should be listening now, Serena promises to be a strong voice for years to come.
