Maria Shriver Opens Up About “Brutal” Divorce from Arnold Schwarzenegger in New Memoir
Maria Shriver, the award-winning journalist and former First Lady of California, has candidly revealed the emotional toll of her divorce from actor and politician Arnold Schwarzenegger in her upcoming memoir, I Am Maria. The 69-year-old shared intimate details about the profound impact the split had on her mental health, describing it as a “devastating, life-altering blow” that followed the deaths of her parents, Eunice Kennedy Shriver and Sargent Shriver.
“My twenty-five-year-long marriage blew up,” Shriver writes in an excerpt obtained by *People*. “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 couple’s marriage ended in 2011 after Schwarzenegger admitted to fathering a child, Joseph Baena, with their former household staffer, Mildred “Patty” Baena. Shriver described being overwhelmed by grief and emotional turmoil in the aftermath.
“I was consumed with grief and wracked with confusion, anger, fear, sadness, and anxiety,” she revealed. “I was unsure now of who I was, where I belonged. Honestly, it was brutal, and I was terrified.”
In search of healing, Shriver turned to therapists, healers, shamans, and psychics before discovering solace in writing poetry. “I started writing from a deep place within,” she shared. Through this creative outlet, she confronted long-buried emotions and self-doubt.
“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,” she wrote. “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.”
Shriver and Schwarzenegger, who share four children—Katherine, Christina, Patrick, and Christopher—have maintained a co-parenting relationship despite their personal struggles. Her memoir promises to be a raw and introspective exploration of resilience, identity, and self-discovery in the face of profound loss.
I Am Maria is set to release in the coming months, offering readers an unfiltered look at Shriver’s journey through grief, reinvention, and ultimately, empowerment.
