‘Trauma happens to everyone on this planet’
Everyone’s mental health is important: Sophie Grégoire Trudeau
MONTREAL — As a mental health advocate, Sophie Grégoire Trudeau speaks openly of her own struggle with an eating disorder in her late teens and early 20s.
“It’s so important to talk about our mental health, to show people they are not alone,” said the 46-year-old mother of three, who is married to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. She is also an advocate, speaker and mentor for causes, including teenage self-esteem, women and girls’ rights and gender equality.
Good mental health isn’t necessarily about waking up happy every day but, rather, about feeling good about who you are, “about developing tools to love and respect yourself in a culture that doesn’t necessarily teach us that.”
Grégoire Trudeau spoke to Postmedia News on Monday, the first day of the 70th edition of the Canadian Mental Health Association’s Mental Health Week, which has as its tagline “#Get Real About How You Feel. Name it, Don’t Numb it.” Better to express our emotions, even uncomfortable ones, and deal with them, “because heavy feelings lighten when you put them into words,” says the website.
“Trauma happens to everyone on this planet,” said Grégoire Trudeau. “In many ways, we are just one trauma away from one another. We all suffer — and when we name that suffering, we develop tools to cope with it.
“The more we talk about our stories, the more we realize that we are not that different from one another — and the more compassion and empathy we develop for ourselves and others.”
A presence on Instagram and Facebook, she has frequent conversations with other Canadians about causes close to her heart. “We need to reach out to one another to share our stories and to tell each other: ‘I feel happy today’ or ‘sometimes I have visions’ or ‘sometimes I’m depressed.’ Sharing those stories will make us feel better,” she said in an exchange with Canadian singer and fellow mental health advocate Serena Ryder.
More than 40 per cent of Canadians say their mental health has declined since the COVID-19 pandemic was declared in March 2020. Hospital expenditures are up and the cost to society has been huge, said Grégoire Trudeau. “We have never needed so much solidarity and empathy for others.”
Grégoire Trudeau was one of the first high-profile Canadians to contract COVID-19. She tested positive for the coronavirus in March 2020, after speaking at a large event in London and posing for pictures with celebrities including actor Idris Elba and race car driver Lewis Hamilton. Her symptoms, which resembled a mild flu, developed once she was back in Canada.
Contracting a new disease was a learning process, “but I am data-driven and so is my husband and so is this government and I have a whole lot of respect for scientists and researchers,” she said.
When Grégoire Trudeau and her husband were vaccinated on April 23 in Ottawa, she held his hand as he received the Astrazeneca injection; when her turn came and he extended his hand, she brushed it away.
As a guest two days later on Tout le monde en parle, the popular Quebec television program, Trudeau was asked by host Guy A. Lepage whether the incident made him feel like Donald Trump: More than once with the cameras rolling, the former United States president reached for First Lady Melania Trump’s hand only to be swatted away.
Trudeau chuckled, explaining that his wife had said, “‘No, no, I am not a baby … I am capable of taking my vaccine without you.’”
Grégoire Trudeau agreed that being “a big girl” was a part of not wanting her hand held for the injection, but added that there was also “a fun note” to the move.
“We like to tease each other,” she said. “We have been together 18 years: I think we can tease each other. Our couple dynamics are real and that’s how I want to keep it. You’ve got to make it fun.”