Maria Shriver reveals how she used poetry to rebuild her identity following ‘brutal’ divorce
Maria Shriver is opening up about the emotional toll her divorce had on her — and how she found her way out of it.
The 69-year-old author was married to bodybuilder, actor and former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger for 25 years before filing for divorce in July 2011, per People.
The former couple, whose divorce was finalized 10 years later in 2021, share four children together — Katherine, 35, Christina, 33, Patrick, 31, and Christopher, 27.
Now more than three years post-divorce, Shriver is revealing how she managed to come to terms with what she described as a “devastating, life-altering blow.”
“My 25-year-long marriage blew up. It broke my heart, it broke my spirit, it broke what was left of me,” Shriver explains in her upcoming memoir “I Am Maria,” according to an excerpt shared by People.
The divorce, which came after her husband admitted to fathering a child with another woman, was just one of many things Shriver was forced to cope with at the time.
In the book, she details the emotional rollercoaster that followed the death of her mother, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, in 2009, and death of her father, Sargent Shriver, a year and a half later.
In just two short years, Shriver appeared to lose everything she had dedicated her life to.
“Without my marriage, my parents, a job — the dam of my lifelong capital-D Denial just blew apart,” she wrote in the excerpt, referring to her job as First Lady of California.
Schwarzenegger had served as California’s 38th governor from 2003 to 2011.
“I was consumed with grief and wracked with confusion, anger, fear, sadness, and anxiety,” she added. “I was unsure now of who I was, where I belonged. Honestly, it was brutal, and I was terrified.”
Shriver recalls the ensuing “self-pity party” that included “a litany of trips to various therapists, healers, shamans, and psychics” as she attempted to work herself out of the funk.
That’s when she received some words of wisdom from Mother Dolores Hart, an American Roman Catholic Benedictine nun.
“I think what you’re really looking for, my child, is permission to leave your marriage, to be Maria,” Shriver recalls of her conversation with Mother Dolores.
In an effort to find her self-worth, Shriver turned to poetry.
“Through my poetry, I’ve found a woman who was terrified of not being able to live up to her family’s legacy,” she says of the expectations that come with being a member of the Kennedy (and Shriver) family.
“Scared of not being big enough, a good-enough daughter, sister, wife, mother, journalist,” she wrote.
Shriver admitted to “measuring herself by some impossible standard” and said she would often avoid trauma, loss, sadness and grief in the same way her family members would.
“No one stopped to cry, no one stopped to grieve,” she wrote, adding that her family would, instead, “annihilate the feelings by pretending they didn’t exist.”
But her poetry helped her release that trauma and grief — noting that it “rushed out like a tsunami” once she let it.
And her newfound self-worth helped her come to terms with two of the biggest mistakes she made in her life.
“One of them was tying my self-worth to my achievements,” she explains. “Another big mistake was thinking that someone outside of me could guarantee my safety, my worth, and my peace.”
This, in turn, helped her overcome a painful message she says was “burned into her little brain” for years.
That message was that “Maria isn’t enough,” and overcoming it became her “lifetime motivation.”
“I used to believe that if you didn’t have a partner, you must be unworthy and unloveable,” she continued. “I’ve learned that nothing could be further from the truth.”
Elsewhere in the excerpt, Shriver acknowledged the “grace, valor, and courage” her four children exhibited during this difficult time in her life.
“Everything about their world and the sanctity of their home got uprooted in an instant,” she wrote.
But now, with a little help from her poetry — some of which is featured in her memoir — she was able to “tap into [her] unconscious, where so many insights are hidden.”
Shriver’s newest memoir “I Am Maria” is set to be published on April 1.
