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Maria Shriver opened up about the “devastating, life-altering blow” that was the end of her 25-year marriage to Hollywood star and former Republican California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
In Shriver’s new book of poetry titled “I Am Maria: My Reflections and Poems on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding your Way Home,” the former anchor of the “Today” show admitted the end of her marriage destroyed “what was left” of her following years of loss, after losing her mom Eunice Kennedy Shriver (in 2009) and her father Sargent Shriver (in 2011), People magazine reported.
“Then a year and a half later, all hell seemed to break loose,” Shriver wrote, in an excerpt obtained by the outlet. “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.”
“Without my marriage, my parents, a job — the dam of my lifelong capital-D Denial just blew apart,” she added. “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.”
Maria Shriver details ‘brutal’ divorce from Arnold Schwarzenegger: ‘I was terrified’ https://t.co/ynSChdIPYQ pic.twitter.com/vHPD4BLaIU
— New York Post (@nypost) March 24, 2025
“I was consumed with grief and wracked with confusion, anger, fear, sadness, and anxiety,” Shriver continued. “I was unsure now of who I was, where I belonged. Honestly, it was brutal, and I was terrified.”
Shriver said she eventually, after trips to therapists, healers, psychics, and even to a cloistered convent, she started writing.
She said through her poetry she “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. “
“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,” she added. “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.”
“I’ve made lots of mistakes. 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,” Shriver continued, noting how she 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.”
Shriver and Schwarzenegger tied the knot in 1986 and had four kids together. The movie star later admitted to his wife that he had had an affair with the housekeeper in 1996 resulting in the two having a son together, E! News noted. Shriver filed for divorce in July 2011, and their divorce was finally official in December 2021.
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