- Welcome back y'all after nine seasons,
as a Real Housewife of Atlanta,
our next guest left the show last year
and promptly went on to polish her first book.
It's called the Pursuit of Porsha and it's out now.
Please welcome Porsha Williams.
(upbeat music)
You are like so beautiful.
- Thank you.
- Yes, and your dress is so perfect for our color scheme.
I love everything.
- You know, I know your show is very colorful,
very energetic. So I was like, I'm going to pop.
- Oh you did? Well done.
(Porsha chuckling) It's so good.
It's so beautiful.
And you, we both have young kids,
but you have a two-year-old, right?
- Yes. - [Kelly] Two-year-old boy?
- She's two. Girl. - [Kelly] Oh she, girl, girl.
- Yeah, Pilar she will be three March 22nd.
- [Kelly] Oh, okay.
I'm in April. Okay.
- Yeah. There she is. - Wait, is that an Aries?
Is that an Aries? You got an Aries?
- I'm not into signs, so...
- I think she's an Aries, she gon lead the world. Okay.
- Oh, she's leading the house.
- Then she's an Aries. - So she's starting with us,
and then she's gon lead the world.
(kelly chuckling) That's how that work.
- But you dedicated your book to your daughter and wrote,
I love this, it says mommy's tears will never be your fear.
So what does that mean to you?
- A lot of different things
that I've gone through in my life,
some were difficult.
Some are great.
I want her to learn from them.
You know, I've already cried those tears.
She doesn't have to go through that.
So hopefully,
she will be the ending of some of those generational curses
and things that I had gone through.
- Break the cycle. - Break the cycle.
(applause)
And that's what the book is about.
So hopefully when she grows up and reads it,
that's what she'll get from it.
- I love it. It's such a beautiful thing.
You actually share your fertility struggle,
which is a brave thing to do.
I've had friends that have struggled for years
with fertility issues.
- Yeah. - And it's a hard thing to do
because people don't realize how much women take that on.
Even though you have no control over it.
And it's just your body,
they're like, what's wrong with me?
And that's a big thing to like come out and be open with.
But I thank you for it.
Cause there's a lot of women that will benefit from this.
- And that's the thing, you know, people,
you think what your body is supposed to do.
So then when you get pregnant
and it's not as easy and people don't talk about it,
you think you're alone.
And for me as a black woman,
I suffered with fibroids
and we suffer with them the most.
- [Kelly] Oh.
- Highest percentage to have fibroids.
- I have people in my family with fibroids.
- Yeah.
- It's hurtful.
It's painful. - It really is.
But the biggest thing is that it went undiagnosed
because doctors just aren't gonna ask you
or just do an ultrasound and look for fibroids.
So for me,
if I would have gotten my fibroids diagnosed earlier on,
I probably wouldn't have had to have the miscarriage
that I talk about in my book.
- Ooh.
- Because what happened was the fibroids outgrew the fetus,
and then it resulted in the miscarriage.
- And it's just such a hard thing to deal with.
Like watching friends that have gone through it.
I can't imagine.
I just think it's a,
it's a really beautiful thing.
Cause I'm a very open person,
but there are things that I don't talk about.
And it's,
it's amazing when people are strong enough
to talk about those things,
because it really does help sharing
and making it a topic of conversation.
That it's a very normal thing that happens unfortunately,
to a lot of people.
- You know, when I went through it, I felt so alone,
even though I was married and my mom was right there,
you still feel like your body has let you down in some way.
And so that's why I joined with March of Dimes.
Hello, March of Dimes organization.
- Oh I worked with March of Dimes.
- You do?
- Yeah. I've worked with March of,
yeah. - Yes, sister.
- It's such a beautiful organization to work with,
but also the statistics you find out are crazy.
- Absolutely. I'm so educated on it now.
But the biggest thing is that I love it,
it's a space for women to be able to communicate,
tell their stories to where you don't feel alone.
So whether you are going into, wanting to have a child
or after childbirth or during childbirth,
there's a whole network of other mommies
and women to be there to encourage you.
And I wish I knew about them
when I was pregnant the first time,
but I didn't,
but now that's why I'm an advocate for them. So.
(applause) - Yeah that's amazing.
It's amazing.
So before we go to break,
it's the first day of Black History Month
and you have a special connection
to the civil rights movement, right?
- Yes, absolutely.
- [Kelly] This is awesome, what is it?
- My grandfather, Reverend Jose Williams,
the late Reverend Jose Williams, he worked,
there's a picture right there with Dr. Martin Luther king.
- [Kelly] Wow!
- He was his right hand, man.
He used to call my grandfather the Bull in the China Cabinet
because he was the one when they went to go march
and he would get everybody rallied up
and energized and ready for the march
and in the purpose of the march.
And so my grandfather's legacy
is that he was a civil rights activist
and my family still runs our family charity.
It's called For Hosea.
- That's so cool.
- [Porsha] Yeah.
- That's an amazing connection. Like,
especially around this time, like reminded every year,
what your family,
those are amazing footprints to leave behind.
- Absolutely. and you know,
Black History Month is a month for us
to really celebrate who we are and our ancestors before us.
So being able to educate the youth,
and myself even more,
about so many positive black people
who have been gone before us
and their footprints we are now walking in
is such a powerful thing to do.
(applause)
- And even if you're not black,
it's an amazing time for everybody
to learn about something you maybe didn't know.
- Absolutely, and highlight the black experience.
So black businesses, e.t.c.
Just let's, everybody we be black in this mother...
You know? Celebrate! (chuckling)
- I just find it really cool.
Like I, that's one thing I love about my kid's school
is like, there's literally every walk of life at our school.
And I love that from a young,
cause I grew up like that when I was really young,
growing up around everything.
And I think that that's really cool
because then you don't see the differences
and you celebrate everything.
It's a magical thing that you.
- It's what you expose your kids to.
- Absolutely, I agree. - Absolutely.