Porsha Williams On How She Takes Her Mental Health Seriously

Porsha Williams, the Atlanta entrepreneur and mother, who came to fame on Bravo’s Real Housewives of Atlanta, says she reached a breaking point not long ago that she’s just now able to talk about.

When she burst onto the reality TV scene in 2012, Williams said she didn’t know that with the spotlight came a lot of scrutiny and judgment. A high-profile divorce and many on-set fights put her in a light she sometimes didn’t want to be in. Then she suffered a miscarriage.

“With the platform of The Real Housewives of Atlanta, you really don’t understand the magnitude of what you’re a part of. Everything I say matters. There are a lot of people listening, a lot of young girls and a lot of women,” she was quoted as saying in Forbes. “And once the realization came to me about the power I had, I decided to start speaking about fibroids. And speaking about suffering with fibroids over the years, I couldn’t not talk about the miscarriage because the fibroids caused my miscarriage.”

Williams, whose grandfather is the late Hosea Williams, a prominent civil rights activist who marched with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and paved a courageous and illustrious reputation as a freedom fighter in his own right, says she has learned through the years to value who she is.

Mental health has become a hot-button topic in recent years. Even the White House has moved to come up with a strategy to combat behaviorial issues that affect us all. Porsha says she’s learned to concentrate on herself.

“Whenever I wake up in the morning and feel those lows, I immediately prioritize Porsha,” she told the publication.

“I bet you thought I was going to say my daughter, but I prioritize myself. I will stop my morning, I don’t care what else is going on. I take it as a health emergency and I will stay in the bed, I will go in the bathtub, I will cry it out. I prioritize myself, because when I can be the best that I can be, then I can be that person for someone else. I can be the best mommy to Pilar. I don’t feel like it’s selfish at all to prioritize my mental health above everything. This is how I’ve pulled myself through depression through the years.”