Venus Williams: Health Struggles to Joy

Venus Williams is fresh off her 25th appearance at the US Open when I hop on the phone with her for a call. “It was honestly just so much joy, and I really enjoyed the moment and being able to go back to doing something that I loved for the first time in so long,” she says of being able to compete after a 16-month break due to health struggles. “I was so grateful, and especially after my health journey. So I just loved having all the love and support from all the fans.”

In July, Williams opened up to “Today” about her struggle with uterine fibroids. She endured years of debilitating pain until finally a doctor recommended a uterine myomectomy, which removed Williams’s fibroids without removing her uterus and greatly improved her quality of life.

“As women, we’ve been told so long, ‘Oh, some women have more pain, some women have more bleeding. It’s a part of being a woman.’ So that’s why I’m speaking up. I really suffered, and my career suffered, my life suffered,” Williams tells me. “Women miss work, women are in pain, women have problems starting families. It’s very serious.”

Williams also acknowledges how hard it can be to find answers when you’re experiencing chronic pain. Her advice? “Educate yourself, but also, at the end of the day, it’s hard to educate yourself. You don’t know that anything’s wrong,” she says, pointing out the challenges women often face at the doctor’s office when trying to be taken seriously for their pain. “And then if someone tells you no, keep going. Educate yourself until you find a doctor who will listen to you. Not every doctor is equipped for everything, and sometimes they don’t want to admit that, but it doesn’t mean it’s your final stop or your final answer.”

“It’s about doing what I want, what I love, and I guess I’ve earned that luxury.”

Besides advocating for her own health at the doctor’s office, Williams also takes intentional steps to prioritize her mental and physical health — she has to, as one of the greatest tennis players of all time and someone living with Sjögren’s syndrome. “Unfortunately, I’m gluten free, and it’s very good for me with living with a chronic illness, but it’s no fun having to pass by everything . . . I want to eat and everyone else can. So that part is hard,” she says, adding that she also follows a plant-based diet. “I try to go to bed early, and that’s not fun either because I’m a night owl. I should have been a DJ,” she laughs.

Hydration is also key to helping her stay energized and is part of her game-prep strategy, which is why she recently partnered with Liquid I.V. “I’m so excited [to partner with Liquid I.V.] because hydration is the name of my game,” she says, going on to detail her routine. She starts hydrating 24 hours before she even plays a match. “On the morning of, I have 16 ounces of water even before I do my first practice. And after that, I continue to drink certain amounts of hydration and water. So I really feel like it’s the story that I live in my life.”

When I ask her what her goals are for her next tournament, she says it’s all about doing what she loves. “At this point, I don’t have any goals. When I walk on the court, I want to play my best, but I don’t have any ranking goals or anything at this point,” she says. “It’s about doing what I want, what I love, and I guess I’ve earned that luxury.”

And she’s staying busy off the court. To start, she is cohosting a podcast with her sister, Serena, called “Stockton Street,” which drops on Sept. 17. She also recently announced the Williams Family Excellence Program, an initiative she’s spearheading with Serena to support under-resourced youth. “This is a real dream, because I see how much tennis has given back to me and how many doors will be opened through the sport,” she says. “And you can further your education, and you can learn so much about yourself. So this dream is definitely incredible because we get to give that back to other young people. And I literally cannot imagine my life without the sport.”

Whether it’s partnerships or playing tennis, Williams focuses on a simple fact of life: joy. She says she has set her life up in a way that allows her to do what brings her joy at least 90 percent of the time. As she says, “We often do things that make us grouchy, but [the things that make you happy] can be everything in life, and those things really help me to be well.”