Maria Shriver Particulars Breakdown After ‘Brutual’ Arnold Schwarzenegger Divorce: ‘I Was Terrified’

“I used to be consumed with grief and wracked with confusion, anger, worry, unhappiness, and nervousness. I used to be not sure now of who I used to be, the place I belonged,” Shriver writes in her upcoming memoir, “I Am Maria.”

Maria Shriver is reflecting on her divorce from Arnold Schwarzenegger.

In a PEOPLE’s excerpt from her upcoming memoir, I Am Maria, the journalist opened up in regards to the “brutal” break up from her husband of 25 years following the revelation of his affair.

Shriver, 69, filed for divorce in July 2011 after Schwarzenegger publicly revealed that he had an affair and secretly fathered a baby with the household’s housekeeper. (Their divorce was finalized in December 2021.)

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In her ebook, Shriver known as the top of her marriage a “devastating, life-altering blow.”

“It broke my coronary heart, it broke my spirit, it broke what was left of me,” she continued, including, “With out my marriage, my dad and mom, a job — the dam of my lifelong capital-D Denial simply blew aside.”

“I used to be consumed with grief and wracked with confusion, anger, worry, unhappiness, and nervousness. I used to be not sure now of who I used to be, the place I belonged,” Shriver recalled. “Truthfully, it was brutal, and I used to be terrified.”

The mother of 4 mirrored on the second she broke down in a resort room over the dissolution of her marriage.

“As I sat on my resort room flooring at nighttime, alone with tears streaming down my face, I assumed to myself: Maria, this doesn’t should be the top of you,” she wrote.

Shriver famous that she did not wish to “bore and exhaust you with the small print of my self-pity celebration” and would “spare you a litany of all my journeys to numerous therapists, healers, shamans, and psychics,” however she did recall how she visited a cloistered convent — and what she discovered.

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“On the finish of my keep there, Mom Dolores took me apart, and in what as soon as once more felt like a scene proper out of The Sound of Music, mentioned to me, ‘Maria. I perceive that you just prefer it right here very a lot. However when you’re pondering you’ll be able to come dwell with us, let me inform you, you’ll be able to’t. Our cut-off age is fifty, and also you’re fifty-five!’” Shriver wrote.

“She mentioned, ‘I feel what you’re actually in search of, my little one, is permission to go away your marriage, to be Maria,’” she continued. “She hugged me, after which we each wept.”

As proven within the excerpt, Shriver additionally praised how she and Schwarzenegger’s youngsters — Katherine, 35, Christina, 33, Patrick, 31, and Christopher, 27 — navigated their dad and mom’ break up within the public eye.

“Now, a lot has been written in regards to the finish of my marriage, and admittedly I don’t really feel like I would like or wish to focus on it right here, or anyplace,” she wrote.

“That mentioned, I do wish to take a second to acknowledge the grace, valor, and braveness my youngsters exhibited,” she added. “The whole lot about their world and the sanctity of their dwelling received uprooted straight away.”

I Am Maria: My Reflections and Poems on Heartbreak, Therapeutic, and Discovering Your Means Residence — a group of private poems about grief, love, and therapeutic — is described as “a roadmap for anybody making an attempt to shed the labels, layers, and armor that holds us again from making a wildly genuine and significant life,” in response to Random Home.

In her ebook, per PEOPLE’s excerpt, Shriver mentioned she wrote from a “deep place inside.”

“By means of my poetry, I’ve discovered a lady who was fearful of not with the ability to dwell as much as her household’s legacy — petrified of not being large enough, a good-enough daughter, sister, spouse, mom, journalist,” she shared, including that she’s “made plenty of errors.”

“One in every of them was tying my self-worth to my achievements,” she mentioned. One other large mistake was pondering that somebody outdoors of me may assure my security, my price, and my peace.”

“I’ve additionally needed to come head to head with different misguided beliefs — about getting old, about being alone,” she wrote. “I used to consider that when you didn’t have a associate, you should be unworthy and unloveable. I’ve discovered that nothing might be farther from the reality.”

I Am Maria will probably be launched on April 1. Pre-order it right here.