Every morning, Serena Williams wakes up and says to herself: Put your best foot forward today.
To her its a concession.
She cant be perfect all the time.
She cant always summon the strength to conquer the morning.
She can only resolve to give the day her best.
Sometimes my best foot is going to be really wobbly.
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Every day is not going to be easy, but thats the whole journey.
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It wasnt her job to fix it, but fixing things is what Williams does.
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She sees a problem.
She itches to solve it.
But now she is done winning other peoples games.
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She is building toward a new kind of international domination.
Ohalso, shes renovating her entire house.
I love the smell of it, she insists when I look skeptical.
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I like things very, very neat.
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So the inherent chaos that seems to follow children everywhere was always going to test her.
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For years Williams optimized her time to serve her bodys needs.
Disciplined is an understatement.
You only see the finalsdid she win, did she lose, she says now.
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You dont see when I couldnt breathe, when I was seeing stars on the court.
When Williams was growing up,she couldnt fathom her mothers nervesher need to warn and correct and caution.
Id be like, I know what to do!
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(You could drown in the ocean!)
Williams is 42 and knows how to swim, but she gets it.
I look at my mom in amazement.
So you know what?
You just have to keep your mouth shut and complain to your sisters.
I grew up with girls.
Id honestly never been around boys unless I was dating one.
And sisters are so special.
Her own daughters have been giving her agita almost since conception.
Its sports lore now that Williamsfound out she was pregnantjust before competing in the Australian Open in 2017.
She won that tournament and revealed she was expecting a few months later.
She liked being pregnant, but she worried the entire time.
Williams confesses that she checked her underwear for blooda sign of potential miscarriagefor nine straight months.
The sheer logistical realities of birth set her teeth on edge.
Its like, Wait,whatis going to happen?
she says.Thatsgoing to open?What?
How is that going to come out of me?
I know its been going on since the beginning of time, but it just doesnt seem to work.
For her it almost didnt work.
Soon after, Williams was diagnosed with a pulmonary embolism.
Her surgical wound burst open.
When she was returned to surgery, doctors found a hematoma.
That horrifying statistic gets cited in news stories, but Williams gave it a known face.
For millions of people around the world, she made the issue of Black maternal mortality personal and real.
She was thrilled to be having another girl.
I mean, I grew up with girls.
Id honestly never been around boys unless I was dating one, she says.
And sisters are so special.
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She happily admits that she and Venus are still codependent.
Some things never change, she says.
I dont even want to not be codependent with her.
I dont want our lives to ever be separate.
Serena has gotten married.
She is a mother.
But there is no one for her like Venus.
A different set of sisters might have let the game come between them.
Tennis is so lonely, she says.
Youre on the road for 10 or 11 months out of the year.
You really rely on having someone else out there.
And Venus was there, and who else was going to relate to me?
We were successful, and we were Black.
We leaned on each other.
We lived together until a year before I had Olympia, so literally our whole lives.
With Adira, Serena knew she would be giving Olympia a version of the most singular relationship she has.
So Williams did not want to take any chances when it came to her second daughters arrival.
She decided to have a C-section, with four doctors on call.
She knew she would not miss experiencing labor, but a part of her still felt a pang.
I have a very high tolerance for pain, she says.
Still, she made her peace with this delivery as she did with the last one.
This time I went in with a plan.
I like to say I put my best effort out there, and this was no different.
I literally thought about it as a Grand Slam: How can I succeed?
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She doesnt mind Google having it too.
To the degree that its possible to make your peace with being colossally, internationally famous, she has.
She doesnt groan when people want to take a photo with her.
In a way, peopledoknow me a little bit, she says.
They have seen me at my biggest moments, and most peoples biggest moments arent public.
This is what I trained for when I was younger.
This has literally been my whole life.
She was never only an athlete, she points out.
She was always an entertainer too.
I do love it.
I loved it, she says.
I think thats a big piece of what I still miss.
I really miss the performance.
The needs of her wildly competitive spirit are more easily met.
The stakes have grown with her profile.
Williams has made bets on more than 85 companies.
In other words, she still plays to win.
People saw it as a charity affair.
But she got it.
People should get credit for that.
That conviction was really powerful and really rare.
She just said, I believe in this idea.
Abbey and Goel have since gotten used to howand whenWilliams communicates.
Shes tinkering with her strategy, fine-tuning it and sometimes asking for advice.
Teefey has become a friend, and Williams has probed her about the choices she made while raising Gomez.
She made it very clear to me that she loved the dynamics between me and Selena, Teefey says.
She really respected that we were open with everything that weve gone through.
The other day Olympia said, My mom is the most famous tennis player in the world.
Shes the best to ever play tennis.
I was like, Who told you that?
Certainly Williams and Ohanian never had.
Okay, it made me feel really good, she says, laughing.
She was so proud.
Some women have a baby and within a week they have to be at work or get fired.
Im like, Can we get a few weeks at least?
Where do we start?
Olympia isnt into sports, and thats fine.
Williams would, however, like her daughters to find a calling.
Whatever you want to do, give it your all, she says now.
It even says that in the Bible.
Whatever you do, do it wholeheartedly.
She doesnt often talk about it publicly, but Williams is deeply religious.
She wasraised as a Jehovahs Witnessand has a Bible within reach on her desk during our conversation.
Its the one thing that was able to keep me grounded, she says.
Were so small, she says.
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Its the most important thing that I personally think you might do.
She had to earn it.
Perhaps because Jehovahs Witnesses tend to maintain political neutrality, Williams doesnt frame her outspokenness as activism.
I dont give a shot to change the world, by no means, she says.
Thats not my mission.
When you have mens voices, it really helps, she says.
She cant fathom why these policies are controversial or partisan when they seem so obvious and essential.
Im like, Can we get a few weeks at least?
Where do we start?
You as a woman are so frail after you have a baby.
The baby needs to be around people who are able to give them what they need.
Retirement looks different for Williamsthan it does for the fishing-and-crocheting set.
She is as busy and committed as shes ever been.
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A few hours after I leave, she will head out for dinner with friends.
She has travel on the docket.
She isno big dealon the auction committee at Olympias school.
She is keeping tabs on dozens of companies.
But her most awe-inspiring achievement might just be the fact that she is starting to be gentler with herself.
The postpartum hormonal firestorm that she experienced after Olympia was born returned with Adira.
You never know when it can happen, she says.
It could be a month; it could be a week.
It could take a year for things to settle down a lot.
We are the vessels of increasing the population, literally.
Its really just keeping a positive environment and giving yourself grace and understanding.
I feel like I have, she says, trailing off for a second.
But I feel like I am trying.
I am learning to take my time and say, I just cant do it today.
I need a day off, and its okay to say that.
The day before our interview, Olympia came home from school with homework.
She wants the drawing to be perfect, Williams says, knowingly.
The girl in the story blots out all her progress, fixated on some ideal she cant reach.
Its also the one that she herself is focused on.
She explained it to Olympia.
She forced herself to listen too: Mistakes mean that youre strong enough to try.
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