NEWSMaria Shriver Admits 'All H--- Broke Loose' After 'Brutal' Divorce From Arnold: 'It Broke My Heart'
Maria Shriver survived her 'brutal' divorce from Arnold Schwarzenegger through poetry.
Maria Shriver opened up about surviving her "brutal" divorce in her new book, I Am Maria.
Maria Shriver said she didn't feel like she needed to address her divorce in her new book.
“All h--- seemed to break loose,” Shriver wrote about the year 2009. “My First Lady job came to an end. My father died. And then came another devastating, life-altering blow: my twenty-five-year-long marriage blew up. It broke my heart, it broke my spirit, it broke what was left of me.”
She noted not having her marriage to Arnold Schwarzenegger, parents or job made the life fall apart.
“Now, much has been written about the end of my marriage, and frankly I don’t feel like I need or want to discuss it here, or anywhere,” she continued. “That said, I do want to take a moment to acknowledge the grace, valor, and courage my children exhibited. Everything about their world and the sanctity of their home got uprooted in an instant.”
Maria Shriver and Arnold Schwarzenegger finalized their divorce in 2021.
She recalls the end of her marriage also left her “consumed with grief” and “wracked with confusion, anger, fear, sadness, and anxiety.”
“I was unsure now of who I was, where I belonged,” she said. “Honestly, it was brutal, and I was terrified.”
At one point, she sat in a hotel room, with tears streaming down her face, and realized the dissolution of her marriage didn’t have to be a death sentence. Trying to find herself, she went to a convent where, like “a scene right out of The Sound of Music,” she was told she was too old to live there by a woman named Mother Dolores.
“I think what you’re really looking for, my child, is permission to leave your marriage, to be Maria,” Dolores stated.
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Maria Shriver claimed she 'used to believe that if you didn’t have a partner, you must be unworthy and unloveable.'
After that, she explained how writing poems — which are featured in the book — allowed her to deal with her “dissociated grief and trauma.” “I’ve made lots of mistakes,” she revealed. “One of them was tying my self-worth to my achievements. Another big mistake was thinking that someone outside of me could guarantee my safety, my worth, and my peace. I’ve also had to come face to face with other misguided beliefs — about aging, about being alone. I used to believe that if you didn’t have a partner, you must be unworthy and unloveable. I’ve learned that nothing could be further from the truth.”
While she didn’t want to share her poems at first with anyone, she eventually showed them to some close friends who encouraged her to release them into the world to help others.
Maria Shriver called poetry 'incredibly powerful.'
“Poetry is incredibly powerful and can help you tap into your unconscious, where so many insights are hidden,” Shriver shared. “I believe anyone can do it and feel its power in their own life, as I have in my own.”
I Am Maria: My Reflections and Poems on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home is out April 1. People obtained an exclusive preview.
