Sophie Grégoire Trudeau ponders personal struggles, path forward

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This article was published 15/06/2024 (493 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

There are many reasons to read Sophie Grégoire Trudeau’s enjoyable book, Closer Together, other than the one likely to draw most of us to it in the first place.

It offers readers a pleasant discovery path towards wellness by a feminist author who is passionately dedicated to mental health, body positivity, emotional literacy, parenting and functional attachment styles in relationships.

What readers won’t find in its 300-plus pages are un-curated glimpses of the life of Canada’s first unofficial first lady (in Canada we don’t offer official status for spouses of our prime ministers).

The book also doesn’t offer a single revelation about her famous (outgoing) husband Justin Trudeau, who has been the country’s prime minister for nine years. Aside from the author’s name on the cover, you would hardly know you were reading something written by someone who’s spent nearly 20 years as a Trudeau.

Amazingly, Grégoire Trudeau writes about marriage and healthy relationships in a way that rarely mentions her husband, except to say that they met, fell in love, had a quick courtship and, after a dinner date in 2004, the future prime minister said to her, “I’m thirty-one years old. I’ve been waiting for you for thirty-one years. Should we skip the girlfriend phase and start with fiancée?”

The couple married in 2005 and while Grégoire Trudeau alludes to a strong love connection, she keeps most details of her life with the prime minister off the page except to say, “as we all know, long-term relationships are not easy to manage.”

An entire chapter could delve into this, but there’s nary a paragraph — nor is there any mention of the couple’s high-profile separation announced last summer.

What Grégoire Trudeau does explore, however, is the impact of politically motivated attacks and hate-fuelled threats to her family on her mental health.

“It’s hard to accept that threats, bullying and uneasiness are part of your day-to-day life, and it’s hard, as a parent, to think that your kids might not be or feel secure in the midst of all this.”

She writes that her mind often experiences “toxic alertness” and that some days it takes “everything I have to not let fear consume me while my amygdala keeps ringing the bells of distress.” Grégoire Trudeau then offers ways in which she’s trained her brain to return to safety mode through breathwork, awareness and meditation.

After divulging details of her personal struggles, the narrative quickly evolves into Q&A interviews with a plethora of featured experts such as Dr. Gabor Maté, psychotherapist Esther Perel and eating disorder specialist Dr. Stéphanie Léonard.

Each of the 10 chapters in Closer Together follows a similar structure: a personal anecdote featuring an area of struggle for Grégoire Trudeau (such as an eating disorder at an early age or a distant connection with a parent) followed by clinical advice from a featured expert.

It’s reminiscent of what you’d expect to hear at a wellness retreat, or on a daytime television talk show on mental health, relationships, body positivity and attachment styles.

One irritating quirk of this book is the number of times the reader is directly addressed using cues such as “we’ll learn more in a later chapter,” or “stay with me; I promise it will be worth it.”

The writing can also be trite at times, offering a kind of motherly wisdom for troubled tweens such as “when we face the truth, we can find solutions to every problem.”

Yet there’s enough research, advice and vulnerability on the page written by a strong, self-aware woman that it makes up for any shortcomings. The result is an enjoyable, informative experience for a reader interested in a wellness narrative from a well-connected feminist.

Rochelle Squires is an avid book reader who traded government briefing binders for books, and can be found at home reading from her to-be-read pile.