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Sophie Grégoire Trudeau shares the big understanding that can make democracies healthy again

In an Upworthy excusive, Canada's "unofficial" first lady shares the root of political dysfunction.

via Pete Souza/Wikimedia Commons

Sophie Grégoire Trudeau at the White House.

Going through a divorce is one of the most psychologically stressful things someone can experience, right after the death of a spouse (and divorce is a sort of death of its own). But for mother of three Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, her split with Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been even more devastating because it happened on the world’s stage.

The 2023 breakup resulted in Grégoire Trudeau experiencing chronic stress, so she turned to the yoga mat and self-regulation to find strength through the painful transition. "I have never been more attuned and caring of my mental health than through this whole process," she told Yahoo Canada. "I have been pushed to dig into my authenticity and to put my attachment issues aside.”

Grégoire Trudeau documented her struggles and triumphs in a recent memoir, Closer Together: Knowing Ourselves, Loving Each Other, where she discusses living with an eating disorder, confronting difficult truths, and finding a deeper connection to herself. Ultimately, it’s a story about overcoming adversity to live a more authentic and fulfilling life.

Sophie Grégoire Trudeau and Justin Trudeau

 Sophie Gr\u00e9goire Trudeau, Justin Trudeau, Canada, Prime Minister, Hamburg Justin und Sophie Trudeau at the Global Citizen Festival in Hamburg. via Frank Schwichtenberg/Wikimedia Commons

On June 24, 2025, she shared her journey at Aspen Ideas: Health during a discussion called “Sophie Grégoire Trudeau: A Personal Wellness Journey.” After the talk, she sat down with Upworthy to share a fascinating connection she made between mental health and politics: healthy democracies require citizens who feel safe in their bodies.

How to create healthy democracies

“Feeling safe in our bodies is a primal need. We all want to feel safe in our bodies. So, if you look at Abraham Maslow's pyramid, safety and having food on your table, a roof over your head—if safety is not there, it's game over for everything else. So, physical safety and emotional safety allows for better human connection. Better human connection means healthier democracies,” she told Upworthy.

She adds that when we are in survival mode, we don’t have time for our deeper needs and lack the bandwidth to develop or practice tolerance and empathy towards others. “You will not be thriving, but you'll be in more of a survival state, and when you're in that mode, your body is doing what it needs to save you. So you don't have much more energy and acceptance or tolerance to give to anyone.”

 Sophie Gr\u00e9goire Trudeau, White House, Melania Trump, Washington DC, first lady Sophie Grégoire Trudeau and Melania Trump.The White House/Wikimedia Commons

When we lack the space for empathy, it becomes harder to understand others, which can throw us into an unending loop of negativity. This can lead to constant rumination about how others are making your life miserable. “It goes on and on and on and on, and it never stops, and then you go and consume something on TikTok or on social media that is about how it's others' fault all the time. 'Well, of course you're miserable, it's their fault,' so that reinforces your rumination process.”

Once people stop showing compassion and empathy for one another, the entire democratic process, from how we discuss issues and culture—whether at our kitchen tables or on social media—is affected. The good news, according to Grégoire Trudeau, is that just like negativity can spiral out of control, positivity can do the same. “A negative loop will reinforce a negative loop, but a positive loop will reinforce a positive loop," she told Upworthy. “So, from a psychological perspective, we can help the brain do that by watching what we consume to stop the negative rumination process.”

The connection Grégoire Trudeau makes between politics and safety is a valuable reminder to all of us who wish to engage in the democratic process while promoting healthy discourse. How we engage with the other side in a debate reveals a great deal more about us than it does about them. When we find ourselves engaging in negativity or refusing to listen to another person’s needs, it may be a clear sign that there’s a significant problem we need to address within ourselves.

  - YouTube  www.youtube.com  

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Democracy

Here’s a paycheck for a McDonald’s employee. And here's my jaw hitting the ground.

The federal minimum wage is still less than this.

via JustFrugalMe/YouTube

How can anyone get by on this?

I've written extensively about minimum wage, supported by fact-checkers, economists, and scholarly studies. All of them support raising the minimum wage as a solution to lifting people out of poverty and getting them off public assistance. It's slowly happening, and there's much more to be done.

But when it comes right down to it, where the rubber meets the road is what it means for everyday workers who have to live with those wages. I honestly don't know how they do it. Ask yourself: Could I live on this small of an hourly wage? I know what my answer is.

(And note that the minimum wage in many parts of the county is STILL $7.25, so it could be even less than this).

paychecks, McDonalds, corporate power, broken systemOne year of work at McDonalds grossed this worker $13,811.18.via JustFrugalMe/YouTube

The YouTube channel Just Frugal Me discussed the viral paycheck and noted there's absolutely nothing wrong with working at McDonald's. More than 2 million people in the U.S. alone work for the fast food giant. The worker's paycheck shows they put in 72 hours over the pay period, making $8.75 per hour. Before taxes, that's $631 for the week. Just Frugal Me's breakdown is even more eye-opening, breaking down this person's pay after taxes and weighing across average rent and utility costs. Spoiler Alert: the total costs for basic necessities far outweigh what this person is making even while working 12 hours per day. But they do make too much to qualify for Medicaid, meaning they will have to go out and buy their own health insurance.

mcdonald's, minimum wage, restaurants, fast food, burgers, big macA photo of a McDonald's in Hartford, CT. via Mike Mozart/Flickr

Even in states like California, where the state's $20 minimum wage ensures that people earn nearly three times as much as the federal minimum wage, which remains as low as when this paycheck first made the rounds nearly 10 years ago.

Still, even for a worker that maxed out at 40 hours per week and took zero vacation or sick time, that's only a little over $41,000 per year. That's barely half the median wage in the state of $78,000 and far below a sustainable living wage in cities like Los Angeles.

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

The U.S. federal minimum wage is just $7.25 and hasn't been raised since 2009. In April 2025, the Raise the Wage Act of 2025 was introduced in the House of Representatives and U.S. Senate. The bill would increase the federal minimum wage to $17 an hour by 2030 and eliminate the subminimum wage for tipped workers and those with disabilities. But supporters should be cautious that it's unlikely to pass the Republican-controlled Congress.

If the Wage Act of 2025 were to pass, over $22 million workers would get a raise, which is 15% of the U.S. workforce. It would raise $70 billion for low-wage Americans, an increase of $3,200 per worker.

“No person working full-time in America should be living in poverty," Virginia Congressman Bobby Scott said in a statement. "The Raise the Wage Act will increase the pay and standard of living for nearly 22 million workers across this country. Raising the minimum wage is good for workers, good for business, and good for the economy. When we put money in the pockets of American workers, they will spend that money in their communities,”

This story originally appeared ten years ago. It has been updated to reflect new information.

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Reality has hit. A small-business-owning mother's receipt that shows the pain of tariffs.

Here's what the new world looks like.

via Sofia Ramsay/TikTok (used with permission)

Small business owner Sofia Ramsay shares her tariff bill.

After the Trump administration raised tariffs on countries across the globe earlier this month, the bills are starting to come due, and we’re getting the first look at how this abrupt realignment to international trade will affect everyday working Americans. Interestingly, a poll in late January 2025 found that only 45% of Americans understand how tariffs work. Many incorrectly believe that the Chinese exporter pays the fee when the US imposes a tariff on China. However, in reality, when the U.S. imposes a tariff on Chinese goods, the American importer pays the tariff. The funds raised by the tariffs then go to the government, like a tax. Polls also show that those who understand how tariffs work are much less likely to support them than those who do not.

How do tariffs affect American business owners?

Sofia Ramsay, a mother who has owned a homemade jewelry business for the past 13 years, explained how the tariffs affect her small business, and it’s a practical explanation of how tariffs work. “I recently started doing a new program which is a subscription box that sends bead kits all about having a good time and celebrating friendships and bringing art into your life," she begins her video. “a lot of the materials that I provide for my subscription service are upcycled and reused just in order to keep up with trends and to keep up with supply and demand. Quite simply, I do need to import a lot of the materials.”

@sofiaramsay

The 🍊🤡 is still up there saying other countries will pay these bills. Tell me how this makes America great?

Ramsay adds that they have a great relationship with the factory she works with in China, but things started to become difficult a few weeks ago. It took over a month to get an expedited shipment of materials. Then she received a tariff bill from UPS. “It was a tariff bill on my import, now I'm happy to pay the price to do my business, but this is something I'm not prepared for as far as price increases,” she said. “I just don't think it's sustainable for my business to take on this level of expense.”

The cost of her tariff bill? $208 on $485 worth of goods. 

That's a 43% increase in her cost of doing business, and the money went to the U.S. government. This was before the administration raised tariffs to 245%, which would have cost Ramsay $698.25.

 


Now that Ramsay's expenses have increased due to the tariff, does she pass it on to the customer? “I’m not willing to raise my prices, but I probably should raise them by 15-20% or so just to offset these fees,” she told Upworthy.

One of the goals of the tariff policy is to encourage Americans to source their products from U.S. companies. Or enable investors to increase manufacturing in the U.S. However, in a recent video, Ramsay explained why she can’t source her products from a U.S.-based company. The only company that does something similar is in New York City, and their products constantly change, so that she couldn’t deliver a consistent product to her customers. Further, the upcycled beads in New York originally come from overseas; they’ve just been handed around through separate transactions.

“I have to just be at the whims and fancies of whatever is available in this warehouse. It would be like if I had a fashion design company, if I was a clothing brand, and then I just switched to being a thrift store or vintage store or reseller, that would kinda pull the rug out from under my customer base,” she said.

Even though Ramsay is in a bind, being charged a hefty price for importing her products and without an option to source them from within the country, she’s optimistic that things may change. “I believe [the tariffs] are temporary and just posturing on the part of this administration. They have no plans to invest in domestic manufacturing,” she told Upworthy.

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Fox News viewers were paid to watch CNN and it actually changed their views

Political bubbles can break.

via Wikimedia Commons

Fox viewers changed their minds after watching CNN

The prevailing logic in today’s political world is that polarization is worsening because people live in media echo chambers where they are only exposed to outlets that mirror their views. People who live in echo chambers come to distrust any opinions outside their bubbles, especially when they're not exposed to conflicting information. This creates a scenario where the person becomes increasingly entrenched in their worldview.

One would assume that after a person becomes fully entrenched in an echo chamber, they have little chance of changing their views. However, a new working paper by researchers at Stanford and Yale universities has found that when people are removed from their bubbles, there’s a chance they’ll change their minds.

David Broockman of Stanford and Joshua Kalla of Yale conducted a study in 2022 where they paid regular Fox News viewers $15 an hour to watch CNN for around seven hours a week for a month. The researchers then surveyed them about their political beliefs and knowledge of current events.

anderson cooper, cnn, cable news, cooper live, newscasters, news programming, liberals, conservativesAnderson Cooper and David Axelrod speaking in the spin room following the CNN Republican Presidential Debate at the Olmsted Center at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa.via Gage Skidmore/Wikimedia Commons

The study is titled “The manifold effects of partisan media on viewers’ beliefs and attitudes: A field experiment with Fox News viewers.” It was conducted in fall 2020, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and the lead-up to the presidential election.

When the participants were polled, researchers found that they were five percentage points more likely to believe that people suffer from long COVID, 6 points more likely to think that other countries did a better job of controlling the virus, and 7 points more likely to support voting by mail.

“CNN provided extensive coverage of COVID-19, which included information about the severity of the COVID-19 crisis and poor aspects of Trump’s performance handling COVID-19. Fox News covered COVID-19 much less,” said the study.

sean hannity, fox news, red state, news bias, political polarization.Fox News host Sean Hannity. via Gage Skidmore/Wikimedia Commons

After Fox viewers switched to CNN, their opinions on the social justice protests happening at the time changed. The switchers were 10 points less likely to think that Biden supporters were happy when police got shot and 13 points less likely to believe that if Biden gets elected, “we’ll see many more police get shot by Black Lives Matter activists.”

Many of the participants also realized that when it came to Trump, they weren’t getting the whole story. After switching to a steady diet of CNN they were less likely to agree that “if Donald Trump did something bad, Fox News would discuss it.”

“Despite regular Fox viewers being largely strong partisans, we found manifold effects of changing the slant of their media diets on their factual beliefs, attitudes, perceptions of issues’ importance, and overall political views,” the authors of the study said.

fox news, fox news van, new york city, politics, political coverageA Fox News van in New York Cityvia Wikimedia Commons

The study shows that Fox News isn’t just a media outlet that affirms its viewers' worldviews; it also feeds them a distorted version of reality that pushes them toward more extreme opinions. The good news is that some of these people can be changed when exposed to better information. It should also be noted that Fox News viewers aren’t the only ones living in information bubbles and that there are plenty of ideological traps that ensnare people on the left as well.

“Partisan media aren’t just putting a thumb on the scale for their side,” Brockman said. “They’re also hiding information that voters need to hold politicians accountable. That’s not just good for their side and bad for the other side — it’s bad for democracy, and for all of us.”

Two months after the study, it was found that the Fox News viewers reverted to their opinions before their exposure to CNN. Still, Brockman believes that the study offers some hope in a time of deep political polarization. “Even among the most orthodox partisans and partisan media viewers,” he said, according to Berkeley, “those who receive a sustained diet of information that helps them see the bigger picture actually are open-minded enough to understand that their side isn’t doing a perfect job, either.”

The study should give everyone hope that all is not lost and that America’s political divide may not be impossible to bridge.

This article originally appeared two years ago.

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