“Real Housewives of Atlanta” star Porsha Williams is getting candid about her health in an all-new interview, revealing a deeply personal struggle that Black women all over the country can unfortunately relate to. Williams is opening up about her issues with fibroids and how they ultimately led her to have emergency surgery that deeply affected her.

Williams shared the information during a sit-down on CBS Mornings with Gayle King on Friday (Sept. 18), explaining how she suffered as a result of having 21 uterine fibroids in her body, with one the size of a cantaloupe. She shared that she first became aware of the fibroids when she was trying to conceive her first child around 2019. After the benign tumors caused her to have a miscarriage, she was eventually able to conceive her daughter Pilar, who is now seven years old.

At the time, Williams also underwent uterine fibroid embolization, a procedure that helps to shrink the fibroids without causing damage to the uterus. The procedure led her to not immediately recognize the symptoms when the fibroids returned, like severe fatigue, migraines, and prolonged menstrual cycles. All of those factors, along with her age (Williams is 45), led her to think she was experiencing perimenopause.

Related: The ‘Fibroid Slayer’ Shares Exclusive Tips For Relief

Thankfully, after a checkup at her fertility doctor’s office, Williams was able to discover the true source of her issues.

“I ended up going with a friend to see about getting her eggs frozen. At our age, if you want to have kids, you’ve got to do that. And I said, well, let me hop on the table. It’s my fertility doctor; I’m pretty familiar with her,” Williams said. “And she started looking into—doing the exam, and she went silent. I looked at the screen, and all I could see was black, and then I started seeing some circular lines. And I’m like, ‘Not again, not again.’”

Williams was then sent to a fertility specialist who was also shocked by what they saw. Within two hours, the reality TV star underwent an MRI and was scheduled for an emergency partial hysterectomy within two weeks. That surgery came with a hefty mental toll.

“I woke up after the surgery and thought, A part of me is gone. Fibroids aren’t something we usually talk about as women, and neither are hysterectomies. There’s a stigma to it, as if you’re somehow less of a woman without your uterus,” she said in an interview with Glamour Magazine.

She continued: “On top of it all was the pain of knowing I’d never carry another child, and that I couldn’t even have eggs retrieved for a surrogate. That door had officially closed.”

Despite her disappointment in not having another child, Williams still views the procedure as a “blessing in disguise” that helps her to be even more present with her daughter. She’s also dedicated to using her platform to speak up more about fibroids so that other women can start asking the right questions and making better, more informed decisions about their health.

“Sitting with it, I realized speaking up could actually make a difference, maybe helping save a young girl from a myomectomy, a miscarriage, or a hysterectomy of her own,” Williams said. “If I could give even one woman more power to ask questions and speak up in a doctor’s office, I knew I had to talk about it. I’m not ashamed anymore, and I want to use every platform I have.”

Williams wants other women to know that

“There’s life after a hysterectomy, after a miscarriage, after any of the hard things we go through as women, and there’s real power in community,” she said.

Williams’ story echoes the plight of many other Black women across America. Per the Black Women’s Health Imperative, roughly 80 percent of Black women will develop fibroids by age 50. Black women are also two to three times more likely to undergo a hysterectomy because of them. A 2024 report from the Mayo Clinic noted that Black women develop fibroids at younger ages and have larger, faster-growing fibroids that come with debilitating symptoms, including severe pain, anemia from heavy periods, and others that “interfere with relationships, physical activity, and the ability to go to work.”