Caroline Tensen on the Infernal Transformation: ‘I wanted out of my body, I hated myself’

“I don’t do that move.” Caroline Tensen said it this way to her husband, Ernst Jean Smedes. Well, I knew that. “I’m a very cheerful kind of home,” she says via Zoom, “but all of a sudden I couldn’t help but cry. Immediately I got up. It didn’t suit me at all. I didn’t understand anything.”

And as if she wasn’t happy enough already, she gained weight too. “When I haven’t done anything else with food and exercise in my entire life, things got worse and worse.” When someone referred her to a hormonal doctor at one point, the money ran out: she was in menopause. One of those ‘hormone-free’ women that she and her best friend, makeup artist Leco van Zadelhoff have always had, has become a bit of a joke.

Well, the laughter was over by then. “I walked with my soul under my arms. I felt like I was sitting on the spare bench at the public broadcasting station, I was fat, and I thought everyone was staring at me. I wasn’t happy with the beating.” When her husband went to work in the morning, Caroline took refuge with her daughter Charlotte.

“She had to take care of me, a mother who supposedly could handle everything, like a collapsing bird, until Ernst came home again. The world was upside down. No country was sailing with me. I had never felt so amazingly weak in My life. If I didn’t have such loving and patient people around me, I don’t know how it would have happened.”

“Car, what’s wrong with you?”

She says it was a pile of misery. “I didn’t look anymore. I wanted out of my body, I really hated myself. I didn’t even dare take my clothes off with light with Ernst anymore. My coach Jost, with whom I’ve been coming for nearly 19 years, I couldn’t hide my shock at the sight of me. I was bloated Absolutely, and I can see my cheek. You can tell it by everything. In a tenth of my strength, I drag myself through the weeks.” Leko’s friend also noted that Caroline was not the same. “I had two huge entrances in my hair, and I became half a man,” said Lecco. What’s wrong with you car?

The most difficult thing for her was that she no longer recognized herself and could no longer bear her shoulders. “I no longer have the strength to handle things and talk to myself. This is so strange for someone who goes on normally and continues to function even with broken limbs. I was so weak that I didn’t know how I had to get through the day. Nothing was fun anymore, when it’s I have all the ingredients in life to be happy. When you’re in the middle of it, you think you’ll never be the same again. It’s so scary.”

low point in india

The low point was a trip to India with Ernst. It was supposed to be a great ride, but from the moment Caroline received a dose of blue and pink dye to her hair during the famous Holi festival, it was unbearable. “My hair is so porous and I don’t know how it was so full of pigment that I was sure it would never come back. After washing it ten times it was still there. I couldn’t cry until when my hair was too I couldn’t get my shorts on my legs anymore, it’s over It’s just that. Now I think: nice and important, don’t be, but at that moment I couldn’t get over it anymore.”

Hormone therapy (treatment with creams and medications that should return certain hormones to the correct level, editor) helped her recover after a little less than a year. “It’s back! I eventually came out strong. Every now and then I still had a small relapse, but then I immediately recognized it and then I quickly come out. I’ve had the worst now.”

You never knew moving could be so extreme. “I wasn’t ready for it at all. I was waiting for those hot flashes, but I didn’t get them. That’s why I didn’t recognize it at first.” In the Videoland documentary ‘The Forbidden Word,’ directed by her good friend Nada Van Ney, Caroline, her son, daughter and husband And dear friends like Leko van Zadelhof, talk candidly about what those moving on with Caroline and other women are talking about as well about their experiences.

By sharing her story in this way, Caroline hopes to help others. “I felt so lonely during that transitional period, because I didn’t dare share it with anyone outside of my immediate environment. I was ashamed that I was ‘that kind of woman’, but later I realized how ridiculous it was. I think a lot of women have it, and they shouldn’t.” That. I think it should be talked about without laughing, for it is nothing but laughter.”

She also found it important that young people, like her 27-year-old son Bob, know what it means to move. “I didn’t tell Bob what happened at the time, but I regretted it afterwards. I think he should know what could happen to his wife later, so that he would be there for her. A listening ear is vital. Thank God he did. I have this.”

Don’t act pathetic

She is not afraid that people will view her and her programs differently after watching the documentary. “The most important thing is that RTL doesn’t start thinking: This is an old woman, and we’re going to stop,” she says half-jokingly. “I especially hope people don’t think I’m pathetic because if this documentary isn’t your thing, it’s a cry for attention. Sure, there are things much worse than menopause, but that’s something a lot of women go through. And we still laughed. I don’t tell My story to take it as pathetic, I really want to stress it, but in the hope of removing the taboo.”

The Forbidden Word can be watched exclusively on Videoland starting today (November 19).