Geneviève Brouillette always believed that she would have children. In her eyes, motherhood was acquired. She had never expressed herself by asking if she would one day become a mother. Rather, the question was “when” it would be.
So much so, that in the early 2010s, when the actress stopped taking the contraceptive pill six months after meeting her lover Frédéric Desrosiers (Air Canada captain), she immediately informed her agent of his plans and notified the producers continued its impending unavailability. It was around the time she was starring in Mauvais Karma and about to star in author Serge Boucher’s series Apparences. Her cautious agent advised her to wait until she was pregnant before thwarting her plans.
And then… Nothing. Geneviève Brouillette never became pregnant as she had hoped and foreseen. A grief that was difficult for her, but from which, as she says, she has fully recovered and which she revisits with great sincerity and emotion in the documentary series “Imparfaite” by Julie Bélanger, available on the Vrai platform . So far, the actress has spoken publicly about her situation on a number of occasions, most notably on the defunct Format Familie on Télé-Québec, where she made a “milk riot” on the issue.
“And this case has resulted in the majority of messages I’ve received on Facebook from women saying to me, ‘Finally someone’s talking about this, someone gets it!’ So I knew that if I talked about it, I would be doing some useful work,” Geneviève said in an interview with Showbizz.net.
The latter and her spouse have followed the path of many couples who want to start a family: natural attempts over a long period of time, medical hormone stimulation, artificial insemination (clinical deposit of the man’s sperm in the woman’s uterus), in vitro fertilization ( Retrieval of the eggs, fertilization, then placing the embryos in the woman’s uterus)… After this ultimate fertility treatment and three years of unsuccessful attempts, the lovebirds decided to give up their arms.
“It was too difficult, I couldn’t go on. From the outside it looks very simple; We are told that if we are unable to do it, we simply have to do IVF and it will work. But that is not true! There are very few women who do in vitro fertilization and it works for them. I think we need to demystify and explain all this because it’s not an easy path. »
“It really relieved me to take the beating. Because it was crazy! It took up too much space in our life, in our relationship. Eventually you waste your life trying to create a better life. That’s why we tell ourselves that we’re going to take what we have and that it’s going to be okay,” Geneviève Brouillette continues.
Today, at the age of 53, Geneviève Brouillette is serene and no longer resents the slight uneasiness that admitting her non-motherhood at receptions with strangers causes. For 15 years, she and her husband have eaten “beautiful dinners” every night, traveled together and “loved too much” — she screams it without embarrassment — their dog, a two-and-a-half-year-old Bernedoodle by the pretty name of Folie.
“There are many advantages to not having children,” she admits. “Life is so much easier! We think more of ourselves and have to make fewer sacrifices for others. My friends who have children worry all the time, no matter how old the children are; Even when they are 25 or 30 years old, parents still worry. I don’t live this. we are freer »
What advice would Geneviève Brouillette give to women going through the same fate and having to say goodbye to the dream of childbirth?
“Very caring and gentle with yourself. Listening to “Imparfaite” because I feel the psychologist is in the episode [Lory Zéphyr, spécialisée en santé maternelle, NDLR] says really interesting things! To give us time to live our pain. »
“Even without children, there are beautiful, fulfilling, interesting and meaningful lives. “We don’t control everything in life and this is a lesson to remind us of that”, wisely concludes the lesson that we will soon find in the new series “La Candidate” on ICI Tou.tv Extra and that we will pick up at some point of the 5th tier shoots.
I’m watching the Imperfect series