5 of the Biggest Revelations From Maria Shriver's New Poetry Book

In Maria Shriver's first-ever poetry book, I Am Maria: My Reflections and Poems on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home, the former First Lady of California brought to light her deeply personal stories, including the aftermath of her split from Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The Terminator actor infamously fathered a child, Joseph Baena, with their former housekeeper Mildred Baena. Arnold and Maria separated after he admitted to infidelity, though it took them years to divorce in 2021.

In the book, out on April 1, Maria detailed her heartbreak and healing journey after she also lost both her parents — her mother, Eunice Shriver, in 2009 and her father, Sargent Shriver, in 2011.

"Without my marriage, my parents, a job — the dam of my lifelong capital-D Denial just blew apart," she wrote in the book.

She added, "I was consumed with grief and wracked with confusion, anger, fear, sadness, and anxiety. I was unsure now of who I was, where I belonged. Honestly, it was brutal, and I was terrified. As I sat on my hotel room floor in the dark, alone with tears streaming down my face, I thought to myself: Maria, this doesn't have to be the end of you."

As part of her attempt to move on, Maria reportedly sought healing from therapists, shamans and psychics. She also stayed at a "cloistered convent," where she met a nun who comforted her.

"She said, 'I think what you're really looking for, my child, is permission to leave your marriage, to be Maria.' She hugged me, and then we both wept," the journalist continued.

According to Maria, her children with Arnold — Katherine, Patrick, Christina and Christopher — showed "grace, valor and courage" following the patriarch's betrayal. Poetry, on the other hand, helped her find the release she had always needed.

"I started writing from a deep place within. Through my poetry, I've found a woman who was terrified of not being able to live up to her family's legacy — scared of not being big enough, a good-enough daughter, sister, wife, mother, journalist," said Maria.

She continued, "I 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. I found someone who had spent a lifetime avoiding grief. And I also learned that when that lifetime of dissociated grief and trauma is released, it rushes out like a tsunami."

Following her graduation from Georgetown University, Maria began working at a local television station and pursued a career in journalism. Shortly after, she met Arnold, then 33, who "looked and sounded different from anyone I'd ever met."

"My attraction to him was instantaneous," she confessed in the book.

Maria said "no one understood" her relationship with the Austrian bodybuilder, but they eventually got married in 1986. While she pursued a career as an anchorwoman, she had to give it up to support Arnold.

"Fast-forward to 2003 and kapow! My movie-star husband abruptly decided he wanted to run for governor of California," Maria wrote. "And then before I knew what hit me, my network news bosses called to ask me for my resignation, because they said my having a politician for a husband gave the appearance of a conflict of interest. I was now 'the Kennedy married to Arnold Schwarzenegger.'"

She added, "I came up with a new plan: I'll become an amazing First Lady of California! Oh, and I'll be home every night for dinner. "

In her poetry book, Maria reflected on the time she lost her uncles — former President John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy — following their assassinations in 1963 and 1968.

Per the 69-year-old author, " no one stopped to cry, no one stopped to grieve" after the losses.

"I could feel that these events rocked the world and ruptured my entire family's life, especially my mother's — but she never spoke about them to me or anyone else," she recalled.

Maria added, "I learned how to cope with trauma, loss, sadness, and grief by doing what everyone in my family seemed to do: annihilate the feelings by pretending they didn't exist. What I heard was, 'Buck up…'"