The granddaughter of Civil Rights Activist, Rev. Hosea Williams, and a nine-year veteran on the hit show The Real Housewives of Atlanta, Porsha Williams has something to say. In her new memoir, she reflects on her childhood depression, her encounter with the now-convicted sex trafficker R.Kelly, and the lessons she’s learned. “I live by the motto, no regrets, only lessons learned”, Williams says.
After nine seasons on The Real Housewives of Atlanta, Williams has said that you “don’t realize you are married to a group of people”(referring to her RHOA castmates). “We’ve grown together. We’ve had ups and downs and beautiful moments. Leaving was such a big step and not an overnight decision”.
Growing up in Atlanta, Williams says she became depressed in middle school and was taken to a therapist by her mother. “I couldn’t tell my mom all the thoughts running through my head”, she says. “I couldn’t tell my mom that I held a bottle of pills, thinking about swallowing all of them, but deciding against it because I feared I would be brain dead and I definitely didn’t want that”.
Williams goes on to say that even a trained therapist in an office downtown couldn’t heal her. She learned to cope by speaking positively to herself and not focusing on all the negative. In essence, she says she “developed skills to survive”.
Unfortunately, she was treated badly and assaulted in her 20s by a boyfriend and then at the age of 25, had several negative encounters with R.Kelly leading her to believe that her mentality was one of an abused person and that “it was okay for me to be treated like that”. When in reality it was not.
Now detailed in the memoir, she tells her mom, “look where my life is today” and says she thanks God for all of it.
