The powerful message Maria Shriver told herself on a hotel bathroom floor amid divorce
Maria Shriver still recalls the powerful words she told herself that allowed her to keep going after she learned her husband, Arnold Schwarzenegger, betrayed her by fathering a child outside of their 25-year marriage.
The TODAY contributor writes about the heartbreak of going through a public divorce from the actor and former California governor in her new book of poems, “I Am Maria.”
Shriver, 69, wrote in her new book’s introduction about a moment after she learned Schwarzenegger had been involved in a sexual relationship with their housekeeper that produced a son, Joseph Baena, now 27.
“As I sat on the hotel room floor in the dark, terrified and alone with tears streaming down my face, I thought to myself: Maria, this doesn’t have to be the end of the you. It can’t be the end of you. Make it a new beginning of you,” she wrote.
Shriver discussed that moment with close friend Oprah Winfrey on the March 25 episode of the “Oprah” podcast, saying, “It’s still an emotional thing for me, but I wanted to pick myself up. I wanted to be more open. I wanted to come out from behind whatever padded door I was living behind.
“I wanted to know how that had happened to me. I wanted to know who I could be moving forward,” she continued. “I wanted to show my daughters and my boys that I could hold myself up with my shoulders back, that I could heal.”
Shriver told Winfrey she really didn’t “know how to heal” at the time, but was determined to do so both for her kids and for herself.
“I had just started going to therapy at the end of my marriage so I had not been someone who had been in therapy,” she explained. “I had not been someone who was on the healing path of life. And I went all in.”
Shriver, who put her broadcast journalism career on the back burner while Schwarzenegger was in office, recalled that until the couple’s painful breakup, she was “playing all the roles” in life.
“I was being a daughter. I was being a journalist. I was being a mother,” she said, adding, “It’s a lot. Everybody I talk to who’s trying to raise kids, take care of parents, work themselves, be a good wife — you’re not really thinking about a lot of other things.”
Winfrey recalled that in 2011, on the day the story about Schwarzenegger’s affair went public in the media, Shriver, who had known about his betrayal for a while by that point, was scheduled to appear at a live taping for the last episode of “The Oprah Winfrey Show.”
“I have never seen a friend like you,” said Winfrey. “Because on the night that you knew that was going to be going public, you came and you showed up for me … and I don’t know how you did that. You weren’t even in your right mind.”
Shriver responded, “I wanted to be there for you because you had been there for me,” adding that “showing up” for the people she loves is important to her.
Shriver and Schwarzenegger tied the knot in 1986 after several years of dating. Shriver filed for divorce in 2011 and the divorce was finalized in 2021.
The former couple share kids Katherine Schwarzenegger Pratt, 35, Christina Schwarzenegger, 33, Patrick Schwarzenegger, 31, and Christopher Schwarzenegger, 27.
During a May 2023 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the former governor called his divorce from Shriver “my failure.”
The action star noted it was a coincidence that he played a divorced CIA operative who was unfaithful to his wife in his new Netflix series “Fubar.”
“But in (my real-life marriage to Shriver), it was my f—up. It was my failure,” Schwarzenegger said. “Also, in the show, he’s deep down still in love with his wife.”
Schwarzenegger, who’s been dating physical therapist Heather Milligan for more than a decade, added that he still loves Shriver. “She and I are really good friends and very close, and we are very proud of the way we raised our kids,” he said.
