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Maria Shriver has finally broken her silence about the devastating impact of her divorce from Arnold Schwarzenegger in her forthcoming memoir "I Am Maria." The 69-year-old journalist and Kennedy family member describes the end of her 25-year marriage as a "devastating, life-altering blow" that left her emotionally shattered.
"My twenty-five-year-long marriage blew up," Shriver writes in a revealing excerpt. "It broke my heart, it broke my spirit, it broke what was left of me. Without my marriage, my parents, a job—the dam of my lifelong capital-D Denial just blew apart."
The high-profile split occurred in 2011, shortly before Schwarzenegger publicly admitted to fathering a child, Joseph Baena, with household staffer Mildred "Patty" Baena. While Shriver avoids delving into these specific details, she doesn't shy away from describing the emotional turmoil that followed.
"I was consumed with grief and wracked with confusion, anger, fear, sadness, and anxiety," she confesses. "I was unsure now of who I was, where I belonged. Honestly, it was brutal, and I was terrified."
The divorce coincided with the deaths of her parents, Eunice Kennedy Shriver and Sargent Shriver, intensifying her sense of loss. This perfect storm of personal tragedies forced her to confront lifelong insecurities about her identity, particularly her fear of "not being enough" outside her famous family's shadow.
Shriver sought healing through what she describes as a "litany" of "trips to various therapists, healers, shamans, and psychics"—even spending time in a convent. Ultimately, she found solace in an unexpected place: writing poetry.
"I started writing from a deep place within," she reveals. "Through my poetry, I've found a woman who had insisted on measuring herself by some impossible standard that guaranteed she'd come up short and feel bad about herself no matter what."
Throughout this turbulent period, Shriver praises her four children—Katherine, Christina, Patrick, and Christopher—for their remarkable resilience despite how "everything about their world and the sanctity of their home got uprooted in an instant." Their strength, she writes, was demonstrated through "grace, valor, and courage."
Oprah Winfrey, who read an advance copy, describes the memoir as "astonishing," noting that "Maria's poems lead us to the open field, a place of self-love, healing, and home."
Shriver's raw account offers a rare glimpse into the private suffering behind a very public divorce, illuminating how even someone from America's most prominent family can feel utterly lost when confronting betrayal and the collapse of a decades-long partnership.
