Katt Williams recently sat down for an interview on the IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson podcast, where he revealed some of the most personal moments of his life, including navigating love and loss through the adoption of 7 children in his now-blended family.

How did Katt Williams’ childhood shape his viewpoint as a parent?

“Love is the most important thing, and it’s free,” Williams said, speaking on how becoming a parent changed his outlook on how he was raised.

Williams grew up a Jehovah’s Witness, and through his love of reading, he realized that he didn’t have the loving relationship with his parents often depicted in stories. By 13, he was emancipated and moved to Miami, making a life for himself at a young age.

Despite his complicated feelings toward his parents, Williams said he still considered them wonderful, and they respected the choices he made. He later drew on that relationship to understand love and parenthood better, adopting 7 children and becoming a father.

“I realized DNA doesn’t matter; bloodlines don’t matter; family’s where the love is,” Williams said.

Williams has 10 children in total, including 3 biological children.

Williams’ adoption journey and blended family, explained

When Michelle Obama stated that Williams had “adopted a lot of kids,” he responded that he “didn’t see that in the bingo cards” for himself. The 54-year-old from Cincinnati, Ohio, shared that his adoption journey began after his son’s mother was living in another state, and she had other children. When she had an addiction crisis, her children went to live in an orphanage.

“When they called me — I don’t have a direct relationship with these children, but they are the siblings of my son,” Williams explained. “And I did all the research, and I knew that it takes a million dollars to raise a child. And I was eager to say, ‘Wait a minute, Lord, are you saying I’m gonna have $10 million to raise 10 kids?’ Fine, let’s do it. Let’s go.”

Williams was already working as a comedian, though not at the level of fame he has today, when he adopted the children. He mentioned he was making less than $25,000 a year, but “everything was looking good.” Williams realized that the only way God could “save him” was to give him a large, blended family after having a promiscuous past with many women who lived with him.

“The kids happening instantly like that meant, ‘Nah, I gotta grow up; I gotta do stuff a different way. Like I gotta do a different trajectory, like, I’m gonna be a family man now, you know? So I couldn’t be the bachelor superstar that I had envisioned at that point that I was getting ready to go into. So, yeah, it saved me for sure,” Williams expressed.

‘There’s no recovery from it’

While Williams was prepared to take on a new role, he also faced one of the hardest things he would ever have to go through as a parent.

“Losing a child is probably the worst thing that could happen to you on this earth,” he said. “There’s no recovery from it,” adding, “That was probably the only regrettable thing is, that I have built myself to be completely impervious to the machinations of the devil. So there was nothing Satan could ever do to take my joy away from any situation, and the worse things going for me personally, the more you can probably find me smiling, telling jokes because that’s how we get back. But in that particular circumstance, it’s the worst thing imaginable; it doesn’t get any better. It actually gets worse. But, yeah, other than that, it was complete joy,” Williams described.

Watch Katt Williams’ full episode on IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson below.