Sophie Grégoire Trudeau says she felt 'guilty' and 'ashamed' of an eating disorder in her early 20s

Sophie Grégoire Trudeau is getting candid about some of her personal struggles. The former "unofficial first lady" of Canada, 49, was the guest speaker at the YW Kitchener-Waterloo fundraiser on Thursday, where she discussed her new book, "Closer Together," and her struggles with an eating disorder in her 20s, with broadcaster Lisa LaFlamme.

“I was ashamed and guilty,” she confessed. “I remember being like, ‘What the heck am I suffering from?’ And every time I was telling myself, ‘This is the last time. Why are you doing this to yourself?’”

Over the past eight years, Grégoire Trudeau has been open about her struggle with bulimia which began in her late teens and early 20s. She shared that her path to recovery was supported by her family and friends and began when she finally chose to speak out about her experiences. "The moment I started sharing my story, obviously I had begun on my road to recovery," she said during an event for Eating Disorder Awareness Week in February 2017.

“I remember feeling ashamed, thinking, ‘Why am I suffering from this?’ On the surface I had it all,” she detailed. “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?’”

Speaking with Yahoo Canada last month, she said eating disorders and anxiety were only the "tip of the iceberg."

"My mom was very obsessed with her physical appearance," she explained. "She was — she is — a very beautiful woman. She was very petite. I had integrated concepts of external beauty: the magazines I was looking at; the magazines my mother was buying. We're all kind of sucked in by the machine, right?"

"I got lots of positive reinforcement when I kept my weight on the low side," she recalled. "So I internalized that concept and the pressure that accompanied it."

Speaking on her separation from Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, with whom she was married for 18 years and shares three children with, she noted the inevitable reality of change in relationships, saying, "We’ve been brought up wanting to attach, and to make everything eternal — our youth, our love, our desire. That is not how life is. It is not," she said at Thursday's fundraiser.

Grégoire Trudeau also implied that she initiated the change to end her marriage, choosing "authenticity over attachments." She opened up about the challenges of being in the public eye as the Prime Minister's wife. “There’s constant intimidation and bullying — daily," she shared.

Despite this, she learned not to take the hateful comments personally and to shield her children, aged 10, 15 and 16, from online criticism.

Grégoire Trudeau pointed out drastic difference between the public's perception of her and her family, and her reality. “Sometimes I’m like, ‘If they could just come to my house for a week. You have no idea what you’re talking about. It’s completely false.’” She admitted that she never saw herself as “the first lady” or her partner as “the prime minister."

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