Serena Williams, Alexis Ohanian and daughter Alexis Olympia Ohanian.Photo: Alexis Ohanian Instagram
Alexis Ohanianpenned a touching message for his legendary wife,Serena Williams, after the tennis championannounced she’d be “evolving away from” the sportearlier this week.
Ohanian, 39,shared a sweet photoof himself and the couple’s 4-year-old daughter, Olympia, along with a heartfelt tribute to Williams' career and legacy.
“I’ve seen over the last 7 years how much y’all love my wife — what she means to so many, worldwide,” wrote Ohanian. “It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen. Plenty of folks have told me ‘how Reddit changed their life,’ but the scale & impact of ‘how Serena changed my life’ stories absolutely dwarfs it.”
He continued, “And that’s just the stuff I hear when people come up to me to say hi. You simply cannot overstate the breadth and depth of influence she’s had on so many people. As far as I can tell, she has no idea.@serenawilliamsdoesn’t think about it, or even realize it.”
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Ohanian,who wed Williams in Dec. 2017, alsoadded a photoof a fan holding up a sign for his wife that read, “Queen.”
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“I have never liked the word retirement,” Williams wrote in a first-person essay for the magazine. “It doesn’t feel like a modern word to me. I’ve been thinking of this as a transition, but I want to be sensitive about how I use that word, which means something very specific and important to a community of people. Maybe the best word to describe what I’m up to is evolution.”
“I’m here to tell you that I’m evolving away from tennis, toward other things that are important to me.” Williams said that she has been “reluctant to admit” to herself or the people around her that “I have to move on from playing tennis.”
“There is no happiness in this topic for me,” she said. “I know it’s not the usual thing to say, but I feel a great deal of pain. It’s the hardest thing that I could ever imagine. I hate it. I hate that I have to be at this crossroads. I keep saying to myself, I wish it could be easy for me, but it’s not. I’m torn: I don’t want it to be over, but at the same time I’m ready for what’s next.”
“I definitely don’t want to be pregnant again as an athlete,” she explained. “I need to be two feet into tennis or two feet out.”
source: people.com
