WELL-BEING
Canada’s first lady Sophie Grégoire Trudeau talks working through trauma, relationships in the public eye and her new book exploring mental health
Sophie GréGoire Trudeau, The de facTo first lady of Canada, has been a mental health campaigner and humanitarian for more than two decades. But her latest project may be her most personal: she’s authored a book on taking charge of one’s mental health and wellness journey.
“I always look for that sense of integrity inside of me. Is it the right thing to do? And is it what I do in life?” Grégoire Trudeau told Newsweek. “I won’t reinvent myself because I’m now a partner of somebody or people see me in this kind of new position, nonofficial first lady, or whatever. So, I always tried to never believe in a role or a title but stay true to course and remember that’s how I need to serve in a way.”
For Grégoire Trudeau, that commitment to serving others is one of the reasons she wrote Closer Together, Knowing Ourselves, Loving Each Other (published by Random House Canada). As she promotes the book, she understands the inevitable interest around her separation from Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau last summer, but she is focused on her deeper reasons for writing.
Her work, part memoir and part self-help book, cites vignettes from her own life to illustrate how childhood can shape mental health, relationships and family dynamics. It features commentary from a diverse panel of experts including the renowned sexologist and clinician Esther Perel. The book offers advice on topics like how to seek life’s purpose, while addressing past traumas and embracing mental and emotional health.
“I wrote this book so that people can know themselves better, love themselves better so that we can give us the maximum tools and opportunities to face the crises that we’re facing,” Grégoire Trudeau told Newsweek on a recent Zoom call.
The tome offers insights into her early life, including a struggle with an eating disorder, and reveals details of her courtship with Trudeau; the pair met as children and reconnected when she was in her 20s. She sent him an email that went unanswered before they bumped into one another on the street a year later. When he asked for her phone number, Grégoire Trudeau told him that if he really wanted it, he would find it. The next day, her phone rang, and the rest was history.
Trudeau and Grégoire Trudeau, who married in 2005 and share three children, Xavier, 16, Ella-Grace, 15, and Hadrien, 10, appear to have navigated their split amicably despite the glare of the spotlight. Alt
