Mathilde Daudet’s Choisir de vivre: Un récit bouleversant (Choosing to Live: A Heartbreaking Story) is not just an autobiography, it is a mirror held up to the soul, reflecting both the light of courage and the shadows of repression. In this intimate narrative, Daudet, the great-granddaughter of the celebrated French writer Alphonse Daudet, tells the story of her metamorphosis from Jean-Pierre, a risk-taking war reporter and father of four, to Mathilde, a woman finally free to exist in her true form. The book reads with the emotional depth of a novel and the authenticity of lived truth. It explores the painful duality of a person torn between the role imposed by society and the identity whispered by the heart. Mathilde, who transitioned in 2010 at the age of sixty, unfolds a life that is as turbulent as it is tender, revealing how one can live a lie for decades and still find the strength to reclaim the self.
The story begins in the 1950s, in a traditional and devoutly Catholic family where obedience, respectability, and masculine virtue were sacrosanct. In a childhood scene that echoes through the rest of the narrative, little Thierry steals a silk beige nightgown hanging on a line and, when no one is looking, slips it over his body. In that fleeting moment, he becomes a princess. The joy of this discovery is immediately punished when an uncle catches him and commands silence. That night of forbidden ecstasy becomes the foundation of a life lived in secrecy and shame. For the next fifty years, Mathilde hides behind a façade of exaggerated masculinity. She becomes a cameraman, a grand reporter covering wars and revolutions, a man nicknamed “Rambo” for his reckless courage. She rides motorcycles, takes helicopters into danger zones without harnesses, and lives in a blur of adrenaline. Yet every evening, the man of steel would peel off his armor and face the ghost in the mirror, the woman trapped beneath.
