Some difficult decisions work like this: you put them off for as long as you can. Take your time, drown out the thoughts in the background and look elsewhere, waiting for the right moment, which is never the right one. Then, one day, something happens – someone said a word, a coincidence, not necessarily an important detail – and you realize that you just don’t want to move on. What was taboo just a moment ago becomes the only possible way.
The point of no return for Serena Williams came when she was in the car with her daughter Olympia.. The little girl was playing with the phone. “What do you want to be when you grow up?” a voice from the app asked her, and she, thinking that no one was listening, replied: “Big sister.” A few weeks later, in a long letter to Vogue that was destined to become a manifesto for freedom of choice, The strongest athlete of all time announced to the world his retirement after the US Open in September. And he did it like no one before him: he explained human causes that went beyond the time factor. Exit is bigger than tennis, which divides the history of women in the sport and beyond into two parts: before Serena and after. And that goes for them all, because it speaks (also) about us.
Serena Williams Beyond
Every athlete has an expiration date, and sooner or later it comes. You know, but it’s like when your favorite series ends: you always want an extra season. In tennis, devouring the heads and bodies of its athletes, there are usually few seasons: the first seasons are laid out to the fullest and finish there, often with relief. Serena’s career, on the other hand, spanned 24 years.: 23 helmets (a modern tennis record for men and women), 4 Olympic golds, 73 individual titles, 25 in doubles. Between the first slam (in 1999) and the last (in 2017, in the second month of pregnancy), 18 years and two “Serena helmets” (four slams in a row) pass, the second – in 2015: at 34, she is still was stronger. While others were squashed by the exhausted sports pressure, she – black in white sports – built her myth by surfing for more than two decades. body shaming and racist commentsin about her anger, about the way she dresses, about femininity.
The unit of measure for his size is this: by demonstrating by physical and mental strength that in sports there are no restrictions either by sex or race, and that an African American may be the strongest female athlete in the world. “Serena Williams,” wrote Tera Hunter, professor of African American history at Princeton University, in The New Yorker, “changed the way people play pushing the boundaries hitherto placed on women. She refused to be anyone other than herself and in doing so paved the way for a new generation of tennis players. Without her, players like Madison Keys, Naomi Osaka and Coco Gauff wouldn’t have the popularity they have today.”
Turning anger into energy
How this was possible, Serena explains in her farewell letter. “My true nature is this: demand the best from myself and prove to others that they are wrong. I won a lot of games because something made me angry or someone put me down. I’ve built my entire career trying to channel my anger and negativity into something positive. I like to think that with the opportunities I’ve had, the girls on the field today feel they can be themselves. What they can play aggressive and cheer, be strong and beautiful, that they let them dress how they want and say what they want, kick ass and be proud. I like to think that overcoming difficult moments in my career saves new generations from fatigue, not only in tennis. This is his legacy. But inheritance is what follows goodbye, and it doesn’t go away, she writes: it just changes direction. And it is here, in this change of course, that we are most concerned about the choice of Serena Williams.
At the crossroads of motherhood
Words are important, and she doses them carefully. It doesn’t say “I’m leaving”, but “I’m leaving tennis” and doing other important things. Two, above all: his investment company Serena Ventures and his family. “I never wanted to choose between family and tennis, I don’t think that’s the right thing to do,” he writes. “If I were a person like Tom Brady, I would go out on the field, play and win while my wife would carry out the physical burden of expanding the family.” On the contrary, she is a woman, and she likes to be one. “I went from a caesarean section to a pulmonary embolism and the final of a big tournament. I played while breastfeeding and in the midst of postpartum depression“But at 41,” she says, “she has to give in to something. She does not like being at a crossroads, because tennis continues to love him, and she would still like to win and compete: unlike others, this life is a sacrifice that she loves to make. But another pregnancy as an athlete cannot be speech and, coming between records and another child, she chooses a child. Here the evolution of the elder crosses the life of all, in the most cruel choice: between motherhood and something else.
As Kyra Konner explains in The Atlantic in an article titled How is Serena Williams’ resignation different?“a woman who broke all barriers and stepped over all the boundaries of the game, in the end, she suffered the same fate as countless women before her: she just can’t have it all.” stronger, Serena knows it’s useless to run amok. Better, in fact, to “evolve”. about Olympia is a sacrifice: everything makes sense with her. And whatever she likes, I like too,” she writes again in Vogue. My parents put a lot of pressure on me, and I, never a rebellious child, followed the rules.”
Meghan Markle interviewed on her podcast episode archetypes devoted to ambition, she said that now for the first time she chose: another child, a new life. She will be dedicated to her family and fundraising for women’s startups through Serena Ventures. And it is difficult, but also interesting. What she will miss the most is the tennis player version of herself. Everyone will be missed.
Source: Elle