This year she became the executive producer of a documentary film, currently in development, about paid leave based on GLAMOUR US’s 28 Days paid leave project. And in her own company, a woman is taking maternity leave now; her baby is a month old, and Williams coos over photos of her newborn. “I’m like, ‘I can’t wait to meet her,’ but she needs this time with her child,” she says. “It’s so important.”
Retirement looks different for Williams than it does for the fishing-and-crocheting set. She is as busy and committed as she’s ever been. WYN Beauty is expanding, having debuted lip glosses and peptide-infused lip liners at the tail end of summer. A few hours after I leave, she will head out for dinner with friends. She has travel on the docket. She is—no big deal—on the auction committee at Olympia’s school. She is keeping tabs on dozens of companies. She is emerging from the throes of the raising-a-newborn stage and watching both of her daughters develop their own personalities.
But her most awe-inspiring achievement might just be the fact that she is starting to be gentler with herself. The postpartum hormonal firestorm that she experienced after Olympia was born returned with Adira. “You never know when it can happen,” she says. “It could be a month; it could be a week. It could take a year for things to settle down a lot. We are the vessels of increasing the population, literally. It’s really just keeping a positive environment and giving yourself grace and understanding.”
She tells me all this with total clarity, wavering only when I ask whether she has really and truly been able to do that. “I feel like I have,” she says, trailing off for a second. “Okay, no. But I feel like I am trying. I am learning to take my time and say, ‘I just can’t do it today. I need a day off,’ and it’s okay to say that.”
The day before our interview, Olympia came home from school with homework. She’d been given a story to read about a little girl who wants to draw but keeps erasing her pictures.
“She wants the drawing to be perfect,” Williams says, knowingly. The girl in the story blots out all her progress, fixated on some ideal she can’t reach. Olympia takes after her mother in this way, and Williams can see this is a lesson she will need to instil over and over in her daughter. It’s also the one that she herself is focused on. She explained it to Olympia. She forced herself to listen too: “Mistakes mean that you’re strong enough to try.”
Photographer: Josefina Santos
Stylist: Christine Nicholson
Hair: Angela Meadows
Makeup: Sheika Daley
Manicure: Tawnee David
Set Design: Ceci Garcia
Production: Select Services
Location: Lady Jean Ranch