Former tennis star Dominika Cibulková she hung up her active career in 2019. After making a major life decision, she focused on her family and today has two adorable children Jakubka and Ninka. She talked about how motherhood changed her in the Off Record podcast with musician Teri Čikoš on the web.
Years later, a successful player became a wife and mother. “At first it was an absolute shock. From an individual athlete who pays his team, who tells him what to do, but on the other hand everything adapts to him, then suddenly something comes to you that you have to adapt to. He has absolutely no interest in how you feel, whether your c-section scar hurts, or your breasts hurt, or that you have to get up every three hours at night.” she talked.
At first, Dominika wondered if this was actually the beautiful thing about motherhood. “Already when we had our second child, when I knew what awaited me, it was much easier for me“, she added. “Just the initial shock of what it will be and how it will be, is an absolute shock. Motherhood changed me in that I remained much more understanding towards other people in some things, and more empathetic,” Cibulková described her inner transformation.
Her young children are also to blame for such a transformation. “Inside, I can be empathetic, but you have to have a hippopotamus skin when playing sports, so that it will then transfer to normal life as well. And the children seemed to start peeling off the hippopotamus skin and I started to be much more empathetic towards my surroundings,” she explained in the podcast. Both Jakubko and Ninka already go to kindergarten, so Cibulková has much more time for self-realization, which suits her perfectly.
The former tennis star does not describe herself as a mother who wants to be at home with her children non-stop. “I say it all the time and it’s nothing to be ashamed of. I love my children more than anything in the world, but I really didn’t feel in the role of a mother at home and to be glued to the child 24 hours a day… It wasn’t that I am now filled with life.” she admitted openly. As a professional athlete, in her own words, she didn’t have to wait for motherhood to define her as being good at something.
