Tennis star Serena Williams recently reminded fans that celebrities, like everyone else, are people. On X (formerly Twitter), the 42-year-old winner posted a photo of herself cuddling with her 3-month-old baby daughter, Adira River. Williams is pictured holding her daughter on her chest, swaddled in a polka-dot blanket.
She captioned it, “This makes me so happy.” The post came some hours after the celebrity mompreneur told her fans she was “not ok today.”
She wrote on the platform, “I am not ok today. And that’s ok to not be ok. No one is ok every single day. If you are not ok today I’m with you. There’s always tomorrow. Love you.”
People claimed that the athlete opened up about her real-life parenting struggles in a humorous TikTok video she uploaded earlier this month. It started with her posing in the black sequin gown with puff sleeves she wore at the recent 2023 CFDA Awards and ended with an image of her pumping breast milk and exhaling a long sigh.
“What my life is really like… It’s not as glamorous as you think,” the mother-of-two wrote in her caption.
According to ABC News, Williams has always been open about her mental health with her fans. Last year, the Olympic gold medalist spoke with Selena Gomez on mental health for Gomez’s Wondermind, a mental health platform that links people with mental health resources and media to improve their “mental fitness.”
“I did this years ago, before even mental health was a topic among everyone’s mind. It was more just like, ‘Alright, I’m shutting myself down today.’ Just subconsciously, it was something I’ve always done,” Williams expressed.
“It’s so important to just put yourself first, especially mentally. I always have shutdown moments. I have serious boundaries and I don’t let anyone cross those boundaries,” she added.
Williams is married to 40-year-old Alexis Ohanian and has two daughters, Adira and 6-year-old Olympia.