The former world No. 4 suffered incredible trauma during her career. Now she’s showing the world how it’s possible to not just survive it, but thrive afterwards.
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 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.
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.”All of which creates a scheduling logjam that makes me wonder how she finds any work-life balance at all.
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.
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