Michelle Williams Discusses Depression and Her New Memoir

Over the years, Michelle Williams has discussed her long-term battle with depression and how it brought her to her lowest point where it caused her to put her professional life on hold and focus on her own self-work.

In 2018 that decision changed her life, and she now hopes to pay it forward in her upcoming memoir “Checking In: How Getting Real About Depression Saved My Life—and Can Save Yours,” which is scheduled for release May 25, 2021.

In an exclusive interview, Williams told ESSENCE, “We have to check-in,” she said, “We have to check in with ourselves. We have to check in with others, and we have to check in with God.”

In Williams’s heartfelt memoir, she shares details exclusively with ESSENCE. Inside the magazine pages, you’ll find that she opens up and reveals her entire truth, which includes a deeper dive into where her anxiety and depression came from.

“I’m ready to share,” she says. “I’ve been a very transparent person and now I’m ready to share the good, bad, and ugly parts of my journey—the concerning part of my journey. The parts I didn’t understand that led to certain responses and decisions being made.”

Williams book will take readers back to the beginning of her story.

“I really go into the specifics, I really go into the first time I was diagnosed,” who says she first suffered from depression as a teenager. “I go into assessing the first time I had anxiety in a romantic relationship and what it did to that relationship and then subsequently what it did to the next one.”

During the unprecendented and tumultuous events of 2020, Williams says her personal healing has been grounded in therapy. “It has not been a perfect journey as far as my anxiety goes,” she says. “But now, I embrace the triggers because it lets me know, okay, you’re not fully healed from this or in this area. Let’s take that to the therapist.”

Since finding her way back to her happy place, Williams has been very vocal about the role therapy has played in getting her life there and she has continued to bring awareness about what it can do for those who are struggling from mental health issues.

“When it’s untreated or you don’t get to the root of things, anxiety and depression can possibly rob you of the very things you work hard for and are praying for,” Williams shares. “Things are treatable, fixable and manageable. You just have to be willing to do the work and really face the pain and lean into it. You gotta touch it, you have to.”

Now she has her sights set on helping others too.

“I’m really looking forward to this next phase of my journey, which is to really help heal through my story,” Williams shares. “Let people know what I do on a daily, what I do on a monthly–whatever it takes to get people whole and get people where they can maybe start seeing some better results in their own life.”