Jelena Dokic is thriving after hardship
Save Log in , register or subscribe to save articles for later. Save articles for later Add articles to your saved list and come back to them any time. Got it Normal text size Larger text size Very large text size Exactly three months ago, during a morning walk along Melbourne’s Yarra River, Jelena Dokic stopped on a bend and snapped a smiling selfie, which she then shared on social media. “If you are struggling …” her post began. The former tennis player was busy at the time – frantic, really – in the lead-up to the release of her documentary, Unbreakable: The Jelena Dokic Story (which later sold out in select screenings around the country, and airs again on Channel Nine after the Australian Open). Dokic was swimming in stress, but her online message wasn’t alluding to the familiar-yet-fraught retelling of the domestic violence she faced as a child, nor the upcoming exhaustion of red-carpet premieres and Q&As. She wasn’t posting about the recent grim reality of her mental health demons, either. Or her eating disorder. Or her abuse from internet trolls. Beaming – in a white windbreaker with pink hood, and with Melbourne Park as a backdrop to her glowing cherubic face – Dokic just wanted to take a minute to admit that she wouldn’t get her intended exercise done that day, on the treadmill or the track. The workout would have to wait. Some days, she added, you can’t move mountains. Some days you can only move from the bed to the couch. And maybe out the door for a stroll. “And you know what?” she wrote. “That’s OK. Today I didn’t feel guilty about that, and I embraced it, and just did my walk, and that’s it. Who knows when I will feel like training again, and that’s OK.” The post was a portrait of defiant contentedness, which is precisely how she seems to me right now. It’s midday, midweek, near the end of the year, and Dokic is wearing that same white and hot pink outfit, with bright orange kicks, and we’re walking along that same stretch of Melbourne, on the crushed cream rock of the Tan Track around the Royal Botanic Gardens, and her smile says it all. From Dokic’s Instagram post last October that began, “If you are struggling…” Credit: @dokic_jelena/Instagram She’d love to be running today but she’s having a few niggling Achilles and plantar fascia issues, and a breathy, swift stride up the Anderson Street hill will more than suffice. She’s grateful for that. Grateful for so many things. “Look around. Look at this,” she says. “We’re having a walk on this beautiful day. We’re so lucky in this country. There are wars going on at the moment. Not all people have this luxury, so I think gratitude is massive. I really try to practise it every day, at the beginning of the day, end of the day, [I’m] grateful for everything.”AdvertisementIt’s a practice she learnt from the late mother of her former partner, who used to get up at 4am to have two restful coffees, alone, and write in her journal, before beginning her day at 7am. “I never understood why,” says Dokic. “And now I get it – now I do the same thing. If I have a flight at 6am, I get up at 3am to have that coffee in peace, talk to myself, appreciate my life, and then my day can start.” Her days are, more often than not, filled. Dokic is a prominent commentator for Nine [the publisher of Good Weekend] during the local summer of tennis and the Australian Open, of course, but she also calls all the other grand slams. This year, she added the Spring Racing Carnival to her portfolio, doing interviews in the Birdcage or for Fashions on the Field. She’s been working in television for six years now, and while the adrenaline of expectation is still there, she feels more at home than ever with the camera pointed her way. “I love TV. I love everything around it, being quick on your feet and feeling the pressure of a live cross,” she says. “I’d love to be a more general colour reporter, or host a travel show, maybe.” ‘I want people to look at me as a success story and say, “If she can do it, I can do it, too”.’ Jelena Dokic She’s increasingly on the speaker circuit, too, with demand for appearances at schools, companies and foundations growing exponentially. She knows her experience resonates with audiences, but also dreams of doing more than storytelling. “Maybe I can do deeper work with different organisations like the Red Cross or the United Nations,” she says. “I do have a massive goal to one day go and do some work on the ground in countries that are affected by war or poverty, and see it firsthand and help. I don’t know. There’s a lot going on in my head at the moment.” Is there ever. Her 2017 autobiography Unbreakable was a bestseller, as was her 2023 follow-up, Fearless. Now Dokic is set to join the likes of Jimmy Barnes, with a third memoir just announced, due out in 2026. “One of the title options might be ‘Unstoppable’,” she says, “or maybe something like, ‘How do you live freely?’ ” Book three, she says, will focus on mindset, self-development and acceptance. “I want to go past hardship and adversity, and go, ‘You know what, I can not just survive, but thrive,’ ” she says. “I want people to look at me as a success story and say, ‘If she can do it, I can do it, too’. That’s what I want my legacy to be.”AdvertisementDokic: “I would rather let myself down than someone else.” Credit: Josh Robenstone All of which creates a scheduling logjam that makes me wonder how she finds any work-life balance at all. Dokic concedes she has a hard time breaking out of thinking like she did when she was growing up – raised to “take every opportunity” – or even the way she was a decade ago, when she was suffering from depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder. “Back then I wouldn’t dare to dream of the opportunities I have now, so you want to ride it – ride that wave,” she says. “I’m someone who goes, ‘Say yes to everything, and get outside of your comfort zone’.” But that comes with challenges, too. She’s a pleaser, far more likely to ignore her own fatigue (“Just suck it up”) than politely decline a request. “I would rather let myself down than someone else,” she explains. “I never want to say no.” She’s getting better, though. More than once this past year, Dokic found the confidence to admit to herself – and to her manager – when she’d reached her limit. “I got to this point where I needed to let everyone know that, for a day or two, I’m not answering the phone, because I’m really drained and I need to take care of myself.” What does that look like? She loves travelling, taking time for a four-week European break every year between Wimbledon and the US Open. She relaxes and sightsees and visits her little brother, Savo, who was just 11 when Dokic escaped their abusive father, Damir, at 19. She didn’t see Savo for years; Damir enforced a separation between the siblings. “We talk literally every second day now,” she says, smiling widely. “I like to say he’s our smarty-pants – very intelligent. There’s no one I love more.” The inner world Dokic creates is important, too; her Southbank home is filled with candles and flowers. “If you buy me flowers, you’ve got me. That’s the way to my heart.” An early shot of Dokic with her brother Savo. Credit: @dokic_jelena/InstagramAdvertisementDiet is a constant consideration, though not a dark companion. Dokic, now 41, recognises her family history of diabetes, heart disease and high blood pressure. It’s not that she needs to question every meal choice, but maybe resist those easy-yet-unhealthy options while working and travelling: the muffins, croissants and coffee on set, or room service after checking in late. “Those things do make you feel better in the moment, but not two hours later. And I was actually often really sluggish when I needed to keep going.” She started introducing a meal replacement shake as a snack when needed, but doesn’t deprive herself, either. “I’ll have a cheeseburger and fries any day, but I have to eat healthily for the energy I need, because with television or speaking engagements or public events, everything is live, so you have to be 100 per cent on, all the time. You can’t make mistakes.” She has no qualms talking about her weight. That’s been clear since she publicly fought back against a wave of online hate over her figure. But it does feel like a topic tied to controversy. She was publicly judged and shamed when she was a size 20, for instance, and now that she’s a size 12, there’s criticism of a different kind. “People go, ‘I feel like you abandoned us’, or I’m jumping on ‘diet culture’. You kind of can’t win,” she says. “So I’m gonna be myself. I went out on Rod Laver Arena and interviewed Novak Djokovic as a size 20, with my head held high, and I will do the same if I’m a size four.” Dokic interviewing Novak Djokovic at the 2023 Australian Open. Credit: Nine News Running is the other thing that gives her sustenance. Always to music. Any upbeat YouTube or Spotify playlist will do. But like all things in her life, Dokic is trying to thread that needle between too easy and too hard. She wants to push herself – maybe into a half-marathon or full marathon – but never wants it to become a stress. Tennis was a physically brutal sport that involved training six or more hours a day and playing for 10 months a year, so she wants her expectations around exercise to stay modest. “We constantly feel like we have to do everything. We constantly feel like we’re failing,” she laments. “I used to be all-or-nothing, too, but I’ve got so much going on. You just have to do the best you can and know, ‘That’s OK, that’s all right’.”Advertisement
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