Sophie Grégoire Trudeau Is Still Figuring It Out

Sophie Grégoire Trudeau’s childhood nickname was Tornado. And if the half-hour I spent with her in March over Zoom is any indication, that hasn’t changed. The woman has supernova energy. She looks serene—blouse, soft and cream-coloured; hair, loose and beachy-waved. She sits in the same spare, beige corner where she does her Instagramming. But close your eyes and listen to her voice: It’s forceful, muscular even, with a Quebecois prang in her vowels (she was raised in Montreal) and the conviction of an athletics coach. It’s a jock’s voice. 

Grégoire Trudeau has always been a striver, restless, sporty, lively, outdoorsy. With her new book, Closer Together: Knowing Ourselves, Loving Each Other—which arrived April 23, the day before her 49th birthday—Canada’s now-former “first lady” (Grégoire Trudeau separated from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, her husband of 18 years, last August) encourages you to strive with her. “We’re all one relationship and one trauma away from each other,” she likes to say. The cover blurbs come from Hillary Clinton and Arianna Huffington. The chapters combine snippets of Grégoire Trudeau’s memoir with interviews she conducts with health and wellness experts (Gabor Maté, Liz Plank, Catherine Price) on topics that run the gamut from childhood attachment to stimulating the vagus nerve. The buzzwords are Passion and Purpose. The goal is to get to know, accept and empower yourself. She’s not an expert and doesn’t pretend to be, so reading it is like attending a yoga/mindfulness/neuroscience retreat with an extremely chatty friend.  

“Writing it felt like I was re-wiring my brain,” Grégoire Trudeau says. “In the past years I’ve devoted myself to the mental health and well-being sphere and path. Having access to incredible knowledge and science and experts—and I always want to learn more and more, I remain always a student—it was clear to me that not only did I want to share the network of people I had access to, but I think this should belong to everybody. We teach our kids how to count, how to pinpoint a country on a map—we have to teach our kids emotional literacy, relational maturity, so they become parents and adults and teachers and leaders and employees and whatever they end up doing with their lives, where you feel that you have more power within yourself and over yourself and your life. Because it’s very difficult, when we look at the state of the world right now, to feel empowered.”

Okay. You no doubt have noticed a few things about the sentences above. They’re the first ones Grégoire Trudeau says to me after “Hello,” and they’re typical of the way she talks. Clauses don’t always scan. About 22 different ideas bump into each other. She tends to include all the words (sphere and path, within yourself and over yourself). Listening to her can be like trying to grab handfuls of a waterfall.

Though it’s evident that her default impulse is generous—I’ve learned this and this and I want to include you and you and come on, come on!—many Canadians give Grégoire Trudeau a hard time. She’s “flaky.” She sang that “ridiculous” song during a Martin Luther King Day tribute in 2016. She “made” Justin and their three children, now 10, 15 and 16, wear embarrassing outfits on their 2018 India trip (as if the Prime Minister of Canada’s wife could ever exert sole authority over something like that). She’s a lot like Justin’s mother, Margaret Trudeau. (When I refer to Margaret as her “ex-mother-in-law,” Grégoire Trudeau says, “Aw, she’s still my mother-in-law!”) Both women are loving mothers; both have had mental health issues (Grégoire Trudeau is open about having bulimia in her teens and early 20s); both thrum with uncontainable realness. 

I ask Grégoire Trudeau if the criticisms sting, and her answer isn’t a straight line. “Can I be really honest here?” she zigs. “No. What is said in the media and what happens in my life are two different things completely. I have learned through research that it is always the same critical mass who wants to divide. And I know these people are suffering. You can’t be in a good place if you’re that hateful to other human beings.

“Does it mean that I’m unaffected and indifferent?” she zags. “Absolutely not. There have been moments where the pain was hard. The chronic stress of never being good enough, of always being criticized, of never pleasing anyone. 

“So how do I not take the criticisms personally?” she zigs again. “I know who I am. That is the luxury of aging.”

“Sophie can remain calm and cool in the face of ignorance and hate,” says the singer Chantal Kreviazuk, who says she and Grégoire Trudeau are “like sisters.” “She can laugh at herself. She’s all love and she’s all in. We go deep.” The friends do “anything and everything together,” Kreviazuk adds. “Sports, yoga, play, nature. We’re so curious, we’ll end up doing an apothecary class or bike riding, just hang out, cook, talk talk talk. But when she is done for the day, she needs to get to sleep! So keep it down! She is getting her beauty sleep! And beautiful she is.” 

Closer Together is chock-full of learning to love, keeping love alive, the science of love, the need for love. Grégoire Trudeau had finished the bulk of it by the time she and Trudeau uncoupled. But since no separation happens overnight, she had to be writing during a tough time. “In the model we live with, success is marriage and divorce is failure,” she demurs. “We dramatize the ending of relationships instead of accepting that we can free the people we love if it becomes necessary. We can restructure relationships without losing the other, without being abandoned. 

“But we were never taught this. We were taught the opposite! So it’s time that we wake up and start sharing this knowledge, so we can continue to not be afraid of loving. I want to be part of the solution.”

Grégoire Trudeau calls herself “a type-A, fiery, leaning-into-action woman.” I ask if it was difficult when the needs of her husband, as prime minister, had to come first. “My father was the breadwinner, and I remember my mum feeling less-than because she was a mother at home,” she replies. “But in my own relationship, I never interacted with Justin in his role as PM. That is not the guy I met. That was and is a job he holds, that he’s extremely devoted to. But I never saw him as that. So I never felt like I was lesser.”

These days Grégoire Trudeau is prioritizing “presence. Service. Balance,” she says. "I’m a mom, I have to hold [down] the fort.”

Helping their kids feel safe in the midst of their separation “is not a one-conversation thing,” for Trudeau and her. “It’s about open communication, facing our truths, sharing as much as we can, depending on the child’s age. Not hiding our conflicts. Showing that conflict is healthy, depending on how we navigate through it. You can tell your children all the wisest lessons. But how you interact with each other as partners, how you interact with people out in the world—that’s what they feed from. Parenting is not a role, it’s a relationship.”

“Sophie has a great radar for dwelling on grief and wasting time,” Kreviazuk says. “She’s a natural emotional coach, and instead of feeding outside drama she tends to just feed connection. I really admire that about her—her ability to, as difficult as something can be, get on with it and not get stuck in the weeds.”

That ability makes this phase of life feel more like a continuation than a new beginning, Grégoire Trudeau says: “It’s time for me, as I near 50, to give to my maximum extent. Without stretching myself thin. Keep it real, keep it connected. Give as much hopeful energy and psychological tools to as many people as possible.” A television project, a podcast, a documentary, another book? “I’m keeping all options open.” 

Toward the end of Closer Together, Grégoire Trudeau writes about learning to feel safe even while sitting in heartbrokenness. So for my last question, I simply ask, “How are you doing?”

“I’m figuring it out,” she says. “Uncertainty is part of life, so I have to learn to embrace it without feeling scared or doubtful. It’s not about not being fearful. It’s about sitting with fear and conquering it. I want to do that.”

See Johanna Schneller in conversation with Sophie Grégoire Trudeau in Toronto on April 26.