SERENA WILLIAMS’ HEALTH BATTLE
THE TENNIS CHAMPION OPENS UP ABOUT HER STRUGGLE WITH MIGRAINES ON AND OFF THE COURT —AND HOW BEING A MUM INSPIRED HER TO SEEK HELP
Serena Williams has triumphed over plenty of tough competition in the two and a half decades she’s dominated on the tennis court, but this spring she faced a challenge that no amount of training could have prepared her for: quarantining at home with a toddler. “Your natural instinct as a mum is like, ‘I want to protect my kid at all costs.’ You don’t know if you should even step outside, and you’re frightened,” Williams says of her first few weeks of coronavirus lockdown at home in Florida with her husband, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, 37, and their daughter Olympia, who turns 3 next month. “It’s all incredibly stressful.” By day, Williams, 38, was in full mum mode, putting on princess dance parties and baking with Olympia, but at night she’d crash. “I would be so intense with the baby all day long,” she recalls. “And then, almost every night, I would have this long migraine.”
For years Williams has battled periodic migraines and has had to learn to play through the pain. But when the isolation and stress that came with the lockdown in March triggered daily attacks, Williams knew she needed help. She consulted with her doctor, who prescribed Ubrelvy and Williams was so pleased with the results she signed on as a spokeswoman for the drug.
And now, as she gets ready to return to the court for the US Open, she says she’s found a way to cope with her new normal. “It’s been a long time since I’ve been able to play competitive tennis,” she says of the postponements because of the virus. “I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I’m just excited about the opportunity.”
It was in her 20s – just as she began her long run dominating her sport – that Williams says she started suffering episodes of “debilitating, throbbing pain in my head” and was diagnosed with migraine. But it wasn’t easy for those around her to understand, including her dad, Richard Williams, who coached her until 2012.
“Migraine isn’t a knee injury – it’s something you can’t physically see,” she says. “You can’t really say, ‘Oh, Dad, I have a migraine. I’m going to stop playing.’ People are like, ‘I don’t see swelling. I don’t see bruising. Tough it out.’ I got used to playing through the pain.”
At times, migraines got the better of her game, like during a 2001 match she lost to Martina Hingis in Sydney. But Williams refused to use the condition as an excuse. “I’m expected to pretty much win all my matches,” she says. “You can’t go into a press conference with media asking, ‘Well, what happened?’ and say, ‘Well, I had a migraine.’ I had to figure out a way to work through it.”
When Olympia was born in September 2017, Williams realised she couldn’t allow an
“I got used to playing through the pain” – WILLIAMS
attack to shut her down at home either. “When I became a mum, I realised that I have to be on,” she says. “When you’re in pain and you’re sitting on the couch and Olympia’s like, ‘Let’s go outside,’ and I’m like, ‘I can’t,’ that’s worse than the migraine.”
Now that Williams has her migraines under control, she says she’s been able to appreciate the extra time she has with her daughter. “I just enjoy everything with her. We ride scooters together, we made cinnamon rolls together – she has this tiny dough roller, and I have a mama-size one.”
She’s been balancing that playtime with daily training on the hard court at her Florida home. Thankfully, “tennis is an awesome socially distance sport”, she says.
At the US Open, due to begin August 31, she’ll attempt to win her 24th Grand Slam singles title – minus the fans to cheer her on. “Without fans, how will I do? I don’t even know. But I look at it as another experience,” she adds. “A wild experience.”