Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, while struggling with bulimia years ago, used to ask, “Why me?”
“I remember feeling ashamed, thinking, ‘Why am I suffering from this?’ On the surface I had it all,” she told a crowd at an event on Parliament Hill for Eating Disorder Awareness Week on Thursday.
“I kept reading about what it was to be a bulimic and saying, ‘This is the last time I’m doing this to myself.’ I started to tremble because of too much binging and purging and thinking, ‘What is this?’”
She said she got through it with the love and support of her family and friends.
Speaking at the event, she congratulated the participants for sharing their stories and for working to help people who suffer from eating disorders.
Grégoire Trudeau isn’t ashamed to talk about her struggle with bulimia, either. “The moment I started sharing my story, obviously I had begun on my road to recovery. The response and the people who were opening up towards their own struggles to me and to other people around them was the most beautiful gift I’ve ever received.”
She urged work on battling eating disorders to continue, and said that decisions should be based on scientific research, not ideology.
“We know what we’ve got to do. Now we really have to start taking it even more seriously and doing it.”