What Justin Trudeau’s wife told Meghan Markle before separation: ‘we all long to be free’

Canada PM Justin Trudeau with Sophie Grégoire (Image credit: @sophiegregoiretrudeau/Instagram)

Canada prime minister Justin Trudeau and his wife Sophie are separating after 18 years of marriage. The couple announced their split in identical Instagram posts yesterday, saying the decision was made after “many meaningful and difficult conversations.”

Months before announcing their separation, Sophie Grégoire had appeared on Meghan Markle’s ‘Archetypes’ podcast, where she spoke about wanting to break out of domestic roles and the desire all women have to be free.

The First Lady of Canada discussed how all women “long to be free in who we are” during her November 2022 appearance on the podcast dedicated to exploring “the labels that try to hold women back.” She also spoke about the guilt that women live with.

When Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex, from A Radical Awakening by Shefali Tsabary about a woman who “like a brave lioness, who sheds all expectations and lives authentically,” Grégoire agreed with the metaphor.

“This is a metaphor for everything. She does a lot of work in the lion tribe, she is the one hunting the food and all that,” said Sophie Grégoire.

“Women across this planet are still the nucleus of the family, they still carry most of the load for housework, contributing to the family's well-being and most decisions concerning the kids.

“But I think we're all that lioness, we all have that inside of us, and we all long to be free in who we are.”

Justin Trudeau and Sophie Grégoire have three children together. They got married in 2005, two years after they met. Grégoire was a classmate of Trudeau's elder brother, but they first met when they were paired together to host a charity event in 2003.