Jelena Dokic asked herself what it would take to feel ‘enough’. There were 10 things on her list

There’s a line down the middle of Jelena Dokic’s life, cleaving it cleanly in two. On one side, the “before”, is the childhood violence at the hands of her father, the brutal years of an elite tennis career, a life observed through the eyes of the public, and the depression, anxiety, PTSD and eating disorder that followed.Nine years ago, on November 13, 2017, she stepped into the “after”. That was the release day for her debut book, a memoir called Unbreakable that’s since been adapted into a Logie-winning documentary.“I’ve said this every single day since – and it’s a huge statement, a massive statement – that was the best day of my life,” Dokic, now 43, says with a smile. “And I don’t say that lightly. I’ve gone through some hard stuff, but ultimately I also had a lot of highlights – professionally and personally – up until that point. But nothing compared to this.” Finding the voice to tell her story, she says, was “literally when freedom started for me”.We’re sitting across from each other at the low tables of The Waiting Room, a bar in the lobby of Melbourne’s Crown Towers hotel. Dokic has come straight from a day spent in front of the camera launching the 2027 Australian Open calendar. She looks stately, almost regal, dressed in a vivid red pantsuit with matching crimson lipstick, her hair slicked back and a monogrammed white Louis Vuitton purse placed between us.Before she’s even had time to order her piccolo and orange juice, Dokic has already been spotted. A man in a fedora and sport coat ambles up to thank her for the work she does. He lowers his volume to share something private, before expressing gratitude again and moving along. Dokic’s smile doesn’t drop as she nods along with him, but once he’s out of earshot, she confesses she couldn’t make out what he was saying. The sentiment was clear, though.Seconds later, a tennis fan approaches, camera at the ready. “Can I be one of those people?” she asks, already slipping off her bag and jacket to take a selfie with the one-time World No. 4. Her mum will be so proud, she tells Dokic. “We love everything about you. Thank you for what you stand for,” she says as she leaves.This is the reality of life on the other side for Dokic. Being embraced for saying the quiet, scary, dark stuff out loud. Building a new life and career from the wreckage of the old one. The young Dokic could never have hoped for a skerrick of the joy that is her new normal today. Life these days is built around her determination not to take that opportunity for granted.She takes more than 100 flights a year and does about 70 speaking engagements on top of her broadcasting work, she tells me. “My life is very different and hectic,” she says. “I don’t have a set week, ever. [When] we do grand slams and I do 18-hour days, I have to be up at 2am.” Her schedule after returning from a recent holiday with her partner, Yane Veselinov, was typical: “In the first 35 days after coming back from Europe, I had two days off.”But no matter how busy it gets, she always makes time for the people who want to thank her or share their stories. “I will try and really, really stop for every single picture or autograph, whether I’m at the airport or wherever I am,” she says.Often, Dokic will ask the organisers of her speaking events if she can kick off proceedings 15 minutes early. Having a bit of slack in the day’s program allows for the moments she knows will come after sharing her story of hardship and resilience.“I have a lot of people that come up to me and say that they feel like they know me and that they can really resonate with me,” she says. “And that, I think, comes from how honest and open and vulnerable and raw I’ve been about my story and about my life.“A lot of people come to me with stories of family violence or mental-health struggles and feeling like they can’t maybe be open and honest about that because there is still a lot of judgment and shame and stigma around things,” she says.It’s a feeling she knows too well. A decade ago, she takes great pains to remind me, the culture was not as accepting of stories like hers. “If you talked about mental health, people would use labels like ‘crazy’, right?” She flashes air quotes, the colourful gemstones on her ring catching the light. “If you talked about family violence, partner violence, child abuse or anything similar to that, [you] would be victim-blamed.”But staring down her past and laying it all out for the public to consume either needed to be done honestly or not at all. “Look, I’m not going to lie. I had fear around releasing that book. I can’t tell you it was easy.”Helping to hone her purpose and push through the fear was the image in her head of the 13-year-old Jelena, who so desperately needed to hear that she was worth something beyond her stats and sponsors and trophies. Who needed to see that a life without her father’s control and cruelty was possible.Jelena Dokic (pictured playing in 2009 at the Australian Open) experienced intense scrutiny throughout her playing career.Vince CaligiuriThe other source of her strength is one she couldn’t possibly have imagined at the time, but one that has revealed itself over the past decade: the people who send her DMs, queue at book signings and see something of themselves in her story. It’s those people she had in mind while planning her third and latest book, Live Free.While Unbreakable was a memoir of her early years and career and 2023’s ‌Fearless: Finding the Power to Thrive focused on the personal development that drove the past decade, Live Free is something of an offering, a guide to taking a piece of Dokic’s strength and instilling it in your own life. Among stories of shame, perfectionism, self-worth and body image are tools and worksheets to shift harmful thought patterns and find useful perspective. “It’s something that I wish I had when I was struggling,” she says.They’re more than hypothetical; Dokic says she calls upon the lessons in the book when she hits a block or feels the familiar creep of low self-worth. That’s where it all begins and ends for her. “I grew up in that very tough, brutal world of an individual sport, in the public eye since the age of 12.”Coupled with the constant demoralisation that comes with being a child of family violence, Dokic’s only metric of success was external – whether she won, what people thought of her, how she looked and was being perceived. “I realised, when I retired from tennis and I had to go into all of these other fields, that I actually didn’t have any self-worth.”She picked up a notebook and asked herself what it would take to feel like she was finally “enough”. By turning inward and eliminating external validation, she ended up with a list of 10 things. “And that’s really where my mindset shifted.” The items were things she could control: “I feel like I’m really, really worthy if I’m disciplined, if I’m on time, if I work hard. Then: if I’m kind. If I’m kind to myself, if I’m kind to others.” Finding the keys to self-esteem can feel like an endless quest, but it can also be that simple.Now, on days when a live cross doesn’t go quite right or she mispronounces something on the air, the walls don’t come crashing down. “Can I really go through a 20- or 30-year career on TV and not ever make a mistake? No, I can’t,” she says. When she accepted the inaugural Bruce McAvaney Award for Most Popular Sports Presenter at the Logies in August – beating out a roster of talent, including the man it was named for – she was staking a claim on those decades to come.“We live in a society that doesn’t accept mistakes almost, right? Sport is like that. Tennis is like that,” she says. “You’ve got to get comfortable making mistakes and being uncomfortable. There’s always another chance, or tomorrow, or something else.”Dokic is the first to admit that this mindset isn’t a finished project, and that it isn’t bulletproof. She is “very, very aware that you’re going to have good days and you’re going to have bad days”. So she hangs onto the habits that bring her back to what works. “I journal. I write things down. I go back to my basics.” And it always needs to be with a physical pen and paper.She writes affirmations on Post-It notes and hides them in her bag on trips, or sticks them on the walls of her Melbourne apartment. They change depending on what she needs to be reminded of. When she was on the receiving end of public body-shaming, she jotted down the same truth she needed to hear as a young woman battling an eating disorder: What kind of person I am doesn’t depend on the outside, but on the inside.Over the past couple of years, when Dokic gets home from long days covering grand slams or speaking to growing crowds, there’s been someone waiting for her. She met Veselinov in 2025, after being single for some time. Coming out of a 19-year-long relationship, she needed time to reorient herself and see that she could make it on her own.“I didn’t date. I didn’t even go on one coffee date. Nothing. I did absolutely nothing for four-and-a-half years. And I wanted it to be like that. I actually learnt that whatever happens tomorrow or in a year or 10 years or whenever – if I am alone and if I live alone, I can absolutely do that. I am really comfortable being myself, looking after myself.”Veselinov was her friend first. They’re both Aries, she says. “We used to joke, before we even started dating, [that] we’re kind of like the male and female version of each other.” Grounding their romantic relationship in a friendship helped them build trust and truly understand each other. “We talked about our families. We talked about our pasts and we talked about our fears and what our traumas and triggers are.” Dokic was also eager to ensure she was not just recognised, but known. “I wanted him to get to know me as a person, not what [he] saw or read or heard.”The two travel together. They talk about getting a dog. Dokic hasn’t got him onto the tennis court yet, but they play pickleball together. Baby steps.Being known is a double-edged sword. It can mean validation and a lack of privacy. Positive feedback one minute and cruel, anonymous comments the next. But for Dokic, everything she shares is worth it if it smooths the road for someone else. “When someone says, ‘I love what you stand for. I love what you do. I love the way that you’ve been able to turn your life around,’ I mean, how can you not go out there every day and try and give back and help?”If you or someone you know needs help, contact: beyondblue 1300 224 636 or beyondbluebeyondblue.org.au. Read more from Good Weekend magazine: