Maria Shriver has opened up about her “brutal” divorce from Arnold Schwarzenegger – and how the shocking split left her “terrified.”
In her upcoming new book, “I Am Maria: My Reflections and Poems on Heartbreak, Healing and Finding Your Home,” the 69-year-old author details the end of her marriage to Schwarzenegger in 2011 after 25 years.
She also touches on how the “devastating, life-altering blow” started her on a journey of self-discovery.
“It broke my heart, it broke my spirit, it broke what was left of me,” Shriver writes, per an excerpt of the book obtained by People on Monday.
“Without my marriage, my parents, a job — the dam of my lifelong capital-D Denial just blew apart,” she adds. Shriver’s parents, Eunice and Sargent Shriver, passed away in 2009 and 2011, respectively.
“Now, much has been written about the end of my marriage,” she continues, “and frankly I don’t feel like I need or want to discuss it here, or anywhere.”
The journalist and former first lady of California adds that she was “consumed with grief and wracked with confusion, anger, fear, sadness and anxiety.” She was also “unsure now of who I was, where I belonged.”
“Honestly, it was brutal,” Shriver says in her new book, “and I was terrified.”
The mom of four also made sure to celebrate her children — Katherine, 35, Christina, 33, Patrick, 31, and Christopher, 27 — in “I Am Maria” for showing “courage” during the implosion of her marriage to their famous father.
“Everything about their world and the sanctity of their home got uprooted in an instant,” she writes. “I do want to take a moment to acknowledge the grace, valor and courage my children exhibited.”
Shriver filed for divorce from Schwarzenegger, 77, in July 2011 after the “Terminator” star admitted to fathering a secret love child with the family’s housekeeper, Mildred Baena, over a decade earlier.
The pair’s divorce was not finalized until December 2021.
While Schwarzenegger welcomed Joseph Baena, now 27, in 1997 with the family’s housekeeper, Shriver did not learn about her husband’s other son until the actor confessed the secret during a marriage counseling session in 2011.
“The reason I feel reluctant talking about it is because every time I do, it opens up the wounds again,” the former governor of California said in the Netflix documentary “Arnold” in 2023. “I think that I have caused enough pain for my family because of my f – – k up.”
“I am going to have to live with it the rest of my life,” he continued. “People will remember my successes and they will also remember my failures. This is a major failure.”
“I Am Maria” hits bookshelves on Tuesday, April 1.
