Every day, a personality invites itself into the world of Élodie Suigo. Thursday February 1, 2024: journalist and writer, Elsa Wolinski. She hosts a podcast that breaks a taboo, that of menopause, “Come on, I dare!”
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Reading time: 14 min
Elsa Wolinski is a writer, journalist and a committed woman. Obviously, as its name suggests, we know who it comes from. Daughter of Maryse and Georges Wolinski, she initially wanted to free herself from an environment, then quickly realized that she too was made for journalism. So she devoted herself to it, then invested herself in writing books with, in 2007, I didn’t marry my father.
When her father was murdered in January 2015, she immediately positioned herself outside of any possible recovery and today, she stands alongside women with her podcast “Come on, I dare!“. She demolishes the omerta and all the certainties linked to menopause.
franceinfo: How was this desire for podcasts born?
Elsa Wolinski: But I was in the middle of menopause! I didn’t understand anything that was happening to me. That is to say that overnight, my behavior changed, I had repeated cystitis, I had everything! The list is a Prévert-style list. I just had stuff that no one understood. A while ago I thought it must be menopause or premenopause.
I struggled so much, I was in such a personal wandering… And then I realized that when I talked about it, women were a little embarrassed. I went to Marseille not long ago and a girl said to me: “Oh no, it doesn’t happen through us!“But what do you mean, it doesn’t happen through you? There are menopausal women in Marseille, it happens through everyone! There are 14 million women in menopause, 500,000 women are in premenopause and they don’t know it. We still have to talk about it.
You needed treatment. This first allowed you to regain the confidence that you had never really had in yourself and to realize that you had to let go.
I mainly did this 21-day cure, this fast, because I wanted to stop taking antidepressants. I took antidepressants for 14 years and when my mother died, she told me: “When I die, I want you to bring me my doll“. And when I put the doll in his arms, I said to myself: “But what are they going to put me on? My antidepressants ?” I told myself no, I’ll stop. And stopping it wasn’t easy. It’s true that fasting helped me a lot. Besides that, I was bulimic for years, which has to do with self-confidence, because physically I didn’t like myself. I love myself a little more today. Its not always easy. I needed to do this treatment to start stopping my antidepressants and to put some emptiness into something full.
You said that for a very long time, you realized that you were looking at life through the eyes of a man, therefore those of your father. And at the same time, you have a lot of your mother.
I’ve realized this since she died. I look a lot like my mother. He was indeed someone who had a strong character, not an easy one. We didn’t have a conflictual relationship, but a complicated one.
Did she actually have her eye on you? You had to be very thin for her. And was it hard for a long time?
It’s not that you had to be very thin. She said : “Look at your daughters, how slim they are, how beautiful they are. Oh look at this woman, how thin she is, how beautiful she is!“And besides that, she wasn’t very tender.
“I had the feeling that I had a mother who smelled more like Shalimar than cake.”
Elsa Wolinskiat franceinfo
You meet a lot of women in this podcast. The exchanges each time take place in parks, in places where there is air, oxygen, we almost feel the wind passing through us.
Yes, it was very important.
Azucena Pagny, Axelle Red, Gwendoline Hamon etc. Did you go looking for strong feminine looks and freedom of speech?
For now, we’ve gone to meet influential women, because it’s so incredible that these women are speaking out. They dare to talk about what’s going on in their pants! Azucena will talk to us about vaginal dryness. It’s still very intimate.
“By telling their private stories, all these women free their voices. They have a lot of generosity because they are in the business of transmission, they want to give to others.”
Elsa Wolinskiat franceinfo
You too are in the transmission. Is it easy to stay upright when you have that temperament?
It’s very tiring, but I take care of myself anyway. At Christmas, my daughters told me that I had become a sad mother and that I was working too much. It upset me a lot, it hurt me a lot. I heard and told myself that we had to set limits.
What we also understand through this podcast is to what extent we can change our outlook on this menopause and also to what extent we can accept our vulnerability.
For me, this is my battlefield. It was at the time of the attack, to be very honest, when I understood that I was just more sensitive than the others and that I didn’t think it was serious to say: I’m crying, I’m sad . When I started on social media saying this, I got a huge number of messages from women saying, “But thanks”, because in our society, we do not have the right to feel bad, we only have the right to perform. You can’t perform well all the time.
Watch this interview on video: