Serena Williams says she cried while writing her emotional retirement letter, but not tears of sadness

• Serena Williams has revealed that she cried into the page while writing her retirement letter.
• But the 23-time Grand Slam winner stressed that her tears weren't "sad tears."

Serena Williams has revealed that she cried into the page while writing her emotional farewell letter to tennis, but stressed they weren't tears of sadness.

Williams, 40, announced she would be retiring from tennis following this year's US Open by way of a letter published by Vogue earlier this month.

In the letter, the 23-time Grand Slam winner said she would be "evolving away" from tennis to focus on being a mother and her business ventures outside of the sport.

Speaking on the first ever episode of Meghan Markle's podcast, Archetypes, Williams recalled the experience of writing the letter.

"It wasn't very easy," she told Markle. "I was in Switzerland, I was just sitting in the hotel at the desk just typing and deleting and typing and thinking and then crying and tears streaming down my face as I'm writing these words and going back on these memories.

"It was really hard."

Williams, who is the most decorated tennis player of the Open era, stressed that while she was upset, her tears weren't "sad tears" and were instead tears of joy that she would be entering the next chapter of her life.

"It's weird because I've been doing this since I can't remember and I'm 40 years old now," she said. "So my whole entire being and my whole entire life has been for one purpose.

"So to not do that anymore, it's exciting, right? I'm really looking forward to it. Honestly, I can't wait to wake up one day and literally never have to worry about performing on such a high level and competing. I've actually never felt that."

She added: "I'm happy about it, but it's just also something that I've actually literally have never experienced in my life."

During her appearance on Archetypes, Williams also told Markle of an incident at the 2018 French Open where she only got "30 minutes of sleep" before a match because her daughter, Olympia, had injured herself.

"So she fell, we went to the hospital, and she had a small tear or break in her wrist, so she had to get a cast," Williams told Markle of Olympia.

"We didn't get back until like four in the morning."