Sophie Gregoire Trudeau gets candid about her Justin Trudeau split ...

Even before Sophie Grégoire Trudeau married Prime Minister Justin Trudeau she was an advocate for mental health, openly sharing her personal struggles with eating disorders.

She shares those struggles afresh, along with tales of her parents, her schooling, her relationships, in her new book, “Closer Together: Knowing Ourselves, Loving Each Other,” which she describes as a personal journey toward empowerment. But Grégoire Trudeau also interviews experts in various fields, Q&A style — scientists, psychiatrists, sociologists, parenting experts — with a focus on the science and neurobiology of mental health.

Finally, the book offers exercises, which are intended to help readers better understand themselves.

“I wanted it to be like a big hug, of people holding each other closer together,” Grégoire Trudeau said in an interview. “And the title is not accidental; I chose it with discernment and intention. It all came together kind of naturally because I wanted it to be a playful journey as well — not just a deep one, but one where people would feel safe.”

Grégoire Trudeau spoke with the Star ahead of the book’s release, and explained why she wants others to live a life that’s full of playfulness, curiosity and mindfulness.

"Coming Together" is all about sharing stories. Did you feel that you couldn't ask people to share their stories unless you shared yours?

I always look for truth inside of me before I share my truth with other people. Sometimes facing the truth is difficult — it hurts. That's part of life. I remember when I was younger, trying to learn more about my own condition with eating disorders. "Why am I suffering from this? Why is this happening to me?" Then comes the guilt and the shame … (there) is still a stigma that surrounds eating disorders or any kind of addiction. As an ambassador and spokesperson for so many different causes — with youth and self-esteem, women's rights and equality throughout the years — I realized, wow, the more I hear stories, the more I realize that whatever title you have or whatever position in society you have doesn't matter. We're all related through our own neurobiology and we all want to be loved, understood and validated for who we are.

It's very important to understand that we need each other to heal. By telling each other our stories, we are helping each other heal because vulnerability and compassion is key in building collective wisdom. Our democracies and our world need it more than ever.

Individual mental health can lead to community mental health, in a way. 

Absolutely. And I'll add that community health is individual health because we can't go into a cave and meditate to heal by ourselves. You can do that for a while, but that's not how we truly heal. The collective and the individual go together.

As a prime minister's wife, there were certain expectations of you. How did you deal with that?

I've never defined myself in my life as someone's partner … I am reticent to see people through their titles and roles. I think when we when we go down that path we create bigger spaces between human beings. That is unnecessary. I chose to … continue on the path that I had already started before (Justin and I) went into politics. So I have that sense of coherence, I guess. Nothing is perfect and there are obstacles along the way, and sometimes there are really big ones. But I learned more about myself through this process, and that's a gift.

In the chapter about love and relationships, you write that most of us would rather kill a relationship than question it or change its structure. Now your own marriage has undergone some fundamental changes recently — you and Justin have separated. How are you approaching that change?

Esther Perel brought that concept forward and I referred to her in the book. I really admire her work. I think that we have so much to gain from an emotional literacy, but also a relational maturity perspective. From religion to cultural concepts, we have been taught that marriage is success, divorce is failure. What?! But life happens in between. When we narrow our concepts and our words, we narrow our space to think (about) and conceive relationships.

The nuclear family has changed. And we have to accept that people have growth curves on different paths. You cannot always expect the person that you're sharing your life with to be at the same point of experience that you are. Sometimes we have this concept of possession of the other when we are in a couple and we become jealous or we become controlling. All this has to do with our own codependency, with our own childhood bond of attachment that expresses again in our relationships and other experiences. I truly hope that we can feel more secure in ourselves by doing the work of being more literate emotionally and relationally, so that when we come into a relationship, we feel much less threatened by the difference of the other.

How does this express itself in broader relationships?

 (One of the experts in the book) stresses that the human beings (who) are the most unhappy are the ones who cannot feel they can trust in others. I'm so moved by that because, look at the state of the world right now — people are in their alert mode and in their untrustworthy mode, and therefore they go into fear. And this creates division and polarization. (That) expresses in so many different levels in our society, and it is not for the health of our, of our communities and our planet. So it is very, very important that we work on ourselves.

Sometimes in relationships, when there is love and this spills outside of romantic love, we must set each other free sometimes. From a neurobiological perspective, the brain doesn't like uncertainty. I've learned to accept that that is not always what life has in store for us; I don't like it either. But there's a deep wisdom there. There's a deep gift there. Because it means we will be better equipped to adapt to change — and the world is asking us to adapt, to change, big time right now. So the lessons from a neurobiological perspective are social lessons. They are lessons of wisdom and self-acceptance and compassion and feeling. Compassion and empathy are very difficult when we are fearful and angry.

How do you see the role of politics, politicians, assisting in that?

I think we have to be very careful (about) pinpointing the world's problems and community's problems to one person or one group of people. That would be an immature way of acting out our own insecurities. I understand how people need to be reassured. I truly believe that if we had better, emotionally regulated leaders all through our corporations, politics, schools, organizations everywhere in our society, in our own families (it would help). I think at the core (it) starts with the individual. We have to … understand better … how we are integrating our own emotions, how we are acting them out, how we can regulate ourselves and become better leaders.

You wrote this book before you and Justin split. If you'd written it after, would you have approached anything differently?

No. If we know how to accept (life’s obstacles) and navigate them, through all the ups and downs, they do make us stronger. They do make us more resilient when we reach out for help, when we tell people that we're struggling, I think that's very important. Don't pretend that everything is perfect. Nobody's life is perfect.

Obviously, right now, when you look at the atrocities of war and injustice I'm sure people feel helpless and (wonder) ‘How can I help? What do I do?’ If we start by being peacemakers in our own homes, it has reverberations.

Part of my goal with the book is that we become more conscious of ourselves to be more responsible for ourselves and others in our communities.

Once you were no longer an official spouse, you were being hounded more in terms of your relationship and your children by certain parts of the media. Do you think it's the beginning of a culture change in Canada around private and family life?

No. You know what? I think that there is what you see in the media, and then there is life. And then there are the people that I meet on the street, at a supermarket, when I run errands, when I'm with the kids, when we're going to basketball games with my son who plays basketball — I'm just choosing examples of our daily lives. There is an abyss between the two. It is very distracting and very concerning that a minority of angry and hateful people — who are also suffering, because hate comes from a deep need for connection — control a lot of the public opinion because of the rapidity of information, the constant exposure to that information. But what we see and what I saw in my own personal life, it doesn't reflect reality. It just doesn't.

What gives you hope in this complicated world we live in?

Humans, believe it or not. I believe in the better angels of our nature. It doesn't come easy. We shouldn't take it for granted. We have to organize and gather more. Get rid of that space and division between human beings as much as we can, so we can tackle the problems that we're facing with more resilience, adaptability and creativity and vision and courage. I've seen enough incredible, inspiring stories of human resilience and people making it through adversity that I choose to believe that we have what it takes to navigate what's coming and choosing otherwise would be irresponsible.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.