Maria Shriver remembers her divorce from Arnold Schwarzenegger as a “brutal” experience.
“It broke my heart, it broke my mind, he broke what I had left,” wrote the journalist in her new poetry book I am Mariaby an extract.
Shriver, 69, wrote about how his world collapsed between 2009 and 2011, in particular with the Terminator The actor’s admission of having generated a love child with their cleaning lady Mildred Baena, by People magazine.
“Without my marriage, my parents, a work – the dam of my denial of capital -d for life has exploded,” added Maria, referring to her mother and father, Eunice and Sargent Shriver, who died respectively in 2009 and 2011.
“Now, many things have been written at the end of my wedding, and frankly, I do not feel like I need or want to discuss it here, or anywhere,” also cited the extract available with them.
For those who were reversed, the former governor of California welcomed the son Joseph Baena, now 27, in 1997 with his cleaning lady when he was married to Shriver – who was not aware of her husband’s secret son until he confessed during their consulting session in 2011.
Shriver also recalled that her children – Katherine, 35, Christina, 33, Patrick, 31, and Christopher, 27 years old – face “grace, value and courage”.
“Everything in their world and the sacred character of their house were uprooted in an instant,” she wrote.
The author “What’s Heaven” said that she “was consumed of sorrow and is not checked with confusion, anger, fear, sadness and anxiety” and “was not sure of whom I was, where I belonged”.
“Honestly, it was brutal and I was terrified,” she added.
The mother of four said that she is “Maria, it doesn’t need to be the end of you”, at the time after crying in the dark on the floor of her hotel room.
Shriver asked for the divorce of Schwarzenegger, 77, in July 2011, but their divorce ultimately finalized until December 2021.
Schwarzenegger also discussed the dissolution of his marriage and his half-decade infidelity in a Netflix documentary in 2023.
“The reason I feel reluctant to talk about it is because every time I do, it opens up injuries again. I think I caused enough pain to my family because of my F ***. ”
“I will have to live with the rest of my life. People will remember my successes and they will also remember my failures. It is a major failure,” he shared.
