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Editor's Letter: Serena's Wimbledon Run Shows The Importance Of Valuing The Journey

There are some weeks where I know what I will be writing about on a Sunday afternoon from Wednesday morning. Then there are some Sundays, like this one, where I will be in two minds. I was torn between writing something about my identity and what I’ve learned about myself this year, or writing about what I have learned from watching Serena at Wimbledon over the last two weeks. So after going back and forth in mind, I think the latter is more timely. 

I remember the first time I saw both Serena and Venus on TV. My dad called me from the garden to watch two black girls with beads in their hair play tennis. I was in awe. As a child, I didn’t have the language to articulate that tennis became interesting because two black women were playing, but my dad knew what it meant. So when Wimbledon came on TV, I would always want to watch Venus and Serena. Their appearance in tennis prompted my dad to buy me a tennis racket and in the summer we would play in our local park. Through watching Venus and Serena play the game with such power while the sun glistened on their black skin, I didn’t just become a Williams sister stan, I became a tennis fan. I began to appreciate the wider game.