This episode of The Oprah Podcast is presented by Lily Direct, your online healthcare resource. Hello to you, dear podcast listener and YouTube watcher. I know your time. So I am thanking you all for taking the time to be with me here. My guest today is a long, long, long time friend, Maria Shriver. Actually, Maria and I...
have been friends as long as Gail and I've been friends, and we all met in the same place at WJZ-TV in Baltimore. We met when we were both in our early 20s, so I've known you now. We've been friends for 49 years. Yeah. And I knew that Maria was writing a book and I asked her to send me her new book. I am Maria, my reflections and poems on heartbreak, healing and finding your way home. have to tell you all and to tell you that I read this on a rainy day, sitting in my window seat, and I wept.
I wept because I've known you all these years. Maria Schreiber has lived an extraordinary life, most of it in the public eye. She was born into American political royalty. Her father, Sergeant Shriver, was an American diplomat and was once a candidate for vice president of the United States. Her mother was Eunice Kennedy Shriver. She was the sister of President John F. Kennedy and Senator Robert F. Kennedy. Eunice was the founder of the Special Olympics.
Maria grew up the only girl in her family with four brothers. In 1986, Maria married the world-famous actor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who later became governor of California. Together, they have four children, Catherine, Christina, Patrick, and Christopher. They divorced in 2021. Maria is an Emmy and Peabody Award-winning journalist and former national news anchor. She served four years as First Lady of California. She's the creator of the award-winning digital publication
The Sunday Paper, which I love to read every week. Maria is the best-selling author of many books and one of the world's leading advocates for women's health and Alzheimer's research. And now she is a loving and doting grandmother to her daughter Catherine's children with actor Chris Pratt, Lila, Eloise, and Ford. In this book, you have opened, literally opened your soul.
and allowed all of us who have any feelings of loss or grief or not being enough or not being able to show up for ourselves, you have led us to the open field. And bless you for that. And I am so proud of you for that. And it's all in the form of poems. And you go places I thought you would never go. I want to say I really, really, really.
am just honored that you have become and evolved into the woman that you are. And I'm so honored to have you as my friend. Oh, thank you. Well, I'm so honored to have you as my friend. I love the idea of having such a long friendship. I love the idea of meeting.
somebody in my early 20s. We didn't know what was going on. You were in the bathroom that morning because you were working on Evening Magazine. Yeah. And you'd been up and I said, well, what are you doing here? And you said, I've been up all night and you're throwing water on your face. And we lived in the same.
We lived in the same apartment complex, right? We lived in the same apartment complex. We shopped at the same supermarket. We ate in the same supermarket. That's right. We would sit there and have those crab cakes. Yes, in Baltimore. In the supermarket, very glamorous. But the idea of having such a long...
friendship you see you know you see someone through a marriage you were in my wedding I was in your wedding all my children uh you were there when I got separated you were there when I got divorced you're there for me now and I feel like hopefully I've been there for you through all of your transitions, through all the people you've been involved with, right?
And I think that's one of life's greatest gifts, to have a relationship that stands the test of time. And that's given me the strength to be standing here. I write in this book that when I got separated, it was a masterclass in friendship. And you were there for me at every, as you well know, you smile, but at every step of the way. And I think that's how we become who we are meant to be is that people.
hold our hands. They walk with us when we don't think we can get there on our own. Yeah. And are willing to tell you the truth about yourself. Yeah. And are willing to tell you the truth about yourself, even when it's hard to listen. Right, exactly. So let's get into it. This is not a memoir. No, it's not. But how would you describe it? I'd say it's really an exploration of my life. It's an exploration really of my childhood.
My daughter calls it reporter poetry. It's poetry from the front lines of my life. It's an exploration of my childhood. Who was I? How did I end up in this family? What did this family mean to me? How did I become who I am today? What's mine? What's theirs? What should I drop?
What do I want to own and who do I want to be? And I think I am Maria, as I write in the beginning, the reflection is when you're in a big family like that, you don't really have your own identity. You're a part of something larger than yourself. a part of the family.
was considered American royalty. I mean, literally. And you were born at a time when Camelot was becoming Camelot, right? Exactly. And so people would just come up to me and they would say, I'd say like, oh, hi, I'm Maria. They're like, no, no, no, but which Kennedy are you? Which Kennedy are you?
you and i'd say well i'm a shriver i'm a shriver they're like look but you're a kennedy right because i don't want to be talking to you if you're not a kennedy right and then who's your mother who's your father and i always had this sense of like that being just myself was not enough. And I think that propelled me throughout my life. And so coming to the place where it would be okay to be myself, claim my own identity, I am. So my mother named me. I am Maria. I am Maria. Full sentence. Stop.
It's not my job. It's not the family that I'm in. I'm not somebody's niece, cousin, ex-wife, wife, friend. I am my own being. And who is that? Right. And you say... Early in the book, I never imagined that writing poetry helped me embark on a journey deep into myself. And I never imagined that everything I sought for, that you were thinking that you...
were looking for was within you all along. Well, that's every spiritual teaching we've ever heard. Well, I know, but I think I was raised in a family that taught you, like, you go out, you change the world, and that's the brass ring. There was no... There was no teaching that you're here, you're enough, sit down, it's okay. So I was like, oh, okay, we're going to go out and change the world. And if I'm not doing that...
I'm not going to get. Yes, because at your dinner table, people literally had to come talking about what you did today. And what is that going to how is that going to impact the world? Oh, how are you going to be of service? Yeah. Big time. You know, you were there. Yes. Hiding in the bathroom. Hiding in the bathroom.
too much pressure. Yeah, it's like, who is your friend? What is she doing? Where is she going? What has she got to offer at the table? What are you going to offer? Yes. What do you have to offer? And I was raised that way. And so what do I have to offer? So I would come prepared. I would come prepared to dinner and I had the feeling that that's what was expected of me. It never dawned on me that just being able to sit.
alone with a person or just being on my own would be enough. And so I think I started to look at that. And I remember when I got separated, you gave me the gift of a meditation teacher. Yes. And you said, I think. Meditation Bob. Meditation Bob. He came to the hotel. Yeah. And he said, I'm going to teach you how to meditate. And I was like. How to quiet your mind. I could not. I could not. He realized after the four days that he was supposed to be there with me. He's like...
I don't think this is a good time to quiet your mind. But he literally sat with me from 10 seconds to 30 seconds to a minute to two minutes to that being now an integral part of my life. But that allowed me. to sit with myself, to be enough for myself, and to start writing from this quiet place that I had never been in in my whole life. You say it was the heartbreak of your divorce that cracked you open to reveal some. of your biggest trauma.
And that turned out to be actually your childhood. How did your divorce lead you back to your childhood? Well, it made me get quiet, first of all. And it made me think about who am I now? How do I move forward if I'm not somebody's? wife, if I'm not the first lady of California, who is Maria? How do I, you know, conduct myself moving forward? What does forward look like? And so I tried to stop myself, get quiet.
And really think about who am I? How did I end up here? How did I end up in this place? And how did poetry become a part of it, Maria? I just started writing. Yeah, I didn't. I had written, obviously, all the news stories. I wrote that kind of, but that's a different kind of. writing. I wrote gratitude journals. Today I went and I saw Oprah. We had a fun time. This is what the day was like. But this kind of poetry, sitting there and just...
Being quiet and realizing, oh, wait a minute, I'm sobbing. What am I sobbing about? Oh, I'm lonely. What am I lonely about? When did I first feel lonely? Where did that come from? Oh, I'm heartbroken. Is this the first time I felt it? Oh, no, I'm not. Let me. close my eyes, let me think about when I was a young girl and I was in a house by myself. And then I just started writing and it just poured.
So let's start with your mother, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, who's one of the most formidable, powerful. I mean, I remember years ago saying if she ran for president, I would do whatever I could to help her. And I think. If she were born at another time, she would have been president. So Eunice Kennedy Shriver, her brothers are your uncles. Right. And were President John F. Kennedy and Senator Robert Kennedy. And Eunice was...
as you say in the book, the most impactful person in your entire life. And in the book, you describe your household as being like a chaotic pressure cooker. Give us a picture of that. Well, when I was little, we lived on a farm kind of outside of Washington, D.C., and my mother started the Special Olympics. So she had like 100 people with intellectual disabilities running around in the backyard, along with 100 volunteers and coaches.
My father would have all these young Peace Corps volunteers who wanted to go out and change the world, and they were running around on any given weekend. And my mother had this camp during the week, and I had four brothers. Where are you in the midst of all that? And I had four brothers, and they had like 20 dogs. And I was the only girl. I am the only girl. And I was in the middle of all of that. And so I was like, OK, where do I belong in all of this? And I had a horse.
And I would go and spend my time with the horse because it was the only place that was quiet. It was the only place that I was like, I could hear myself think. And I wanted to be a lot like my mother because she was... my role model, right? But it was chaotic and crazy and tragic. And there was constant upheaval. There were constant people coming in and out of the house. The table was...
filled with 15, 20 people. There was Mother Teresa, Robert McNamara, there were vice presidents, everybody was world leaders. I remember the first time I went to your house, there were all these letters in the bathroom from like... all the world leaders you've ever read about in history. And you're like 23, right? And you're 24. Yes. And I got the message that, you know, you need to be this.
And I, you know, I never dawned on me to question that. I just expected that that's the path that I was going to take. So did you feel loved? I didn't even know what that was.
I didn't even... Nobody talked about love in my house. It wasn't a conversation anybody was having. We were talking about... We were... out to change the world we were talking about my uncle jack we were talking about the peace corps we were talking about people with intellectual disabilities that's what we were talking about things would happen i remember having this conversation with you 20 years later because i still remember november 22nd 1963 like it was
It's probably in your body. Yes, it's in my body because I was nine years old walking home from school in the rain by myself and President Kennedy had been shot. And I remember having a conversation with you and you said... We never discussed it at our house. No. And I could not believe that. Well, we didn't discuss feelings in my house. My mother had a saying where she would say, I don't want to hear one yip out of you. And...
And I don't think she did it to be mean. She did it to just keep it moving. So the president of the United States, her brother is shot and there's never a conversation about that. No, there's never a conversation about any of it. And then four years later, your uncle is shot and there's never a conversation about that. It's just like, let's keep moving. Let's keep moving. And I think that came from her mother who had gone through losing.
to other children, and she just kept moving. She had a strong faith, and I think she wanted to represent a figure to her children. Things happen, but we have to carry on. That's why this book, I Am Maria, is so... Miraculous, actually, because you came from an environment of what happened to you. Nobody discussed feelings. Nobody talked about really what were tragic events in the household.
kept going and kept doing and let's show what we can do to serve the world. And yet you've now offered us your soul. Coming up, Maria Shriver explains why her mother Eunice had double padded doors to get into her bedroom, a place Maria was almost never allowed. Plus, she reveals what happened the moment she found out her marriage to Arnold Schwarzenegger was over.
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You can visit lilydirect.com today and take the first step towards a healthier, more balanced life. Thank you for listening to my conversation on the Oprah podcast with my dear friend, Maria Shriver. I've known her for nearly 50 years. We're talking about her new book of poetry titled I Am Maria, where she opens up about the highs and the lows of her extraordinary life.
I want to begin with some of your beautiful poems. So in one stanza of a poem titled The Child Within, I think is that the first one? Yes, I want... I'm going to read it, okay? Okay, you read it. The child within. What are you afraid of, says the voice of the adult, full of judgment and scorn. I realize that's my mother talking to me.
I know she can't abide fear or weakness. She can't handle neediness. She can't comfort the child in me. Don't come in my room, says my mother. Stay out of my room. Get out. Go away. Get out. Go away. So I do. That's my mother's voice. Stern, scary, terrifying. The child in me is anxious and scared. I wonder about the child in her. Is that child anxious and scared? Nobody saw her. Nobody sees me.
That was how I grew up. And I have come full circle to really thinking about the child and my mother, how nobody saw her. Nobody comforted her. And I think our job is to heal ourselves so we don't continue the pattern. Right. I didn't want to be. I admired my mother. She's still my greatest role model. I think about her probably every single day. I'm in conversation with her. And you were one of those daughters, like Gail. Right. You were my two best friends.
I didn't have anything close to that kind of relationship with my mother. And both of you talk to your mothers every day, multiple times a day. And I could never understand. What the hell are y'all talking about? Yeah, about work, about my brothers and about what are we doing? How are we changing the world? But I realized after my mother died, really, that nobody talked to her. about her feelings. Nobody comforted her. Nobody talked to her about her grief. So how could I have expected her?
to do that for me. And I wanted to break that pattern as a mother. I wanted to break that for my own children. So I talk a lot about feelings. I talk a lot about... With your boys and your girls. With my boys and my girls and with my friends as well. To me, that's really important is to go deep and to understand what are you feeling? What are you thinking? How can I be there to support you? You know, in any way, because I didn't get that as a kid.
Yeah, explain the double-padded door and the get out, get out, your mother actually saying, go away, get out. Well, my mother was sick pretty much all my life, and... I think people didn't realize that really about her. And so she had two padded doors before going into her bedroom. And she told... us that it was because she was a light sleeper and needed to sleep. But there were two really double padded doors to get into her room, which you didn't get into.
And so my experience was she lived at the end of the hall behind these two padded doors that there was no way she could hear me if I knocked on the door. And I just grew up thinking. Well, gosh, I guess that's how people are. Their mothers live behind padded doors. And then I would see other kids whose mothers didn't live behind padded doors. And my parents had separate bedrooms and I grew up like that.
And I started to think later in life, like, what was she doing behind those padded doors? What was she trying to keep out? What was she afraid of? brings me great grief to think of her behind the doors and to think of me and my brothers in front of the doors. Yeah, trying to get in. And I think that... You know, I think I started to think about in what way was I doing that? In what way did I have padded doors in my own life?
You write this about feeling terrified in your own home. You say, everyone lives behind closed doors. I stand here, frozen in the darkness, terrified. My brothers can't help. They aren't yet men. As the sun begins to break through, I return to my room down the hall. I shut my door. Daylight is coming. One more night is over. I made it through again. What was it that was terrifying you? Well, you know, both of my uncles had been killed, so there was this feeling in my family that people were...
getting killed. And so I thought, well, we're all going to get killed. And out to kill you. Yeah. And I lived in this house way out in the woods, lived next to a mental institution. And I just... was terrified all the time. I was an only girl, as I said, and the feeling of like somebody's going to come in here, the house creaked. Yeah.
the house. And it was scary. Nobody talked about what it was and what had happened. And nobody picked me up and said, it's going to be OK. What are you feeling? The idea of somebody talking to me about my feelings was so foreign. I don't think that happened until I was. my 20s or 30s or somebody would ask me how I feel and I'd be like, fine. What do you mean how do I feel? I don't know how I feel. Just keep going. Let's keep working.
And I think it wasn't until really, you know, conversations that we would have or that I'd start to be thinking, wow, I think I should be feeling something. I don't know what I'm feeling. And then as I became a mother, I started to feel. I, you know, gave birth. I was always terrified to become a mother. But where was your father in all of this? So they slept in separate bedrooms, as a lot of people do. And your mother was at the end of the hall.
Did he know that you were and your brothers were trying to get in? I don't know. Did he know? I don't know. My father was mad about my mother. He thought he was the luckiest man in the world. He idolized my mother, adored her. and wanted to do everything he could to ease her physical pain and to help her become who she wanted to be. I think my mother was constantly herself. trying to get her parents' attention, trying to be somebody in her own family.
I think in many ways she herself felt invisible in her family. And I think she felt she had no power in her family, that the power was all with the men. And so I have great empathy for my mother's journey. I have incredible empathy for what my mother went through. And I found that actually in going to Hoffman much later in life, understanding...
who my parents were when they were young. What were their dreams? How did they grow up? I hadn't really thought about them as two smaller individuals. You know, they were just big people to me. But trying to think about who they were at 12, who they were when they met. what their dreams were. And Hoffman is the Hoffman Institute. It's the Hoffman Institute where you go to look at kind of patterns and process in your own family and how you can kind of look at your parents with not...
With a greater sense of empathy and understanding. Not blaming them, but understanding them, what happened to them. And that was really the first time that I thought about what had happened to them. And did you see them differently? Yes, absolutely. Is that where I See You Now came from, the poem that you write about your father? Yeah, I See You Now. I wanted my father...
to stand up to this terror that I felt as a child. And I didn't understand his quiet strength. I didn't understand, you know, the way he was showing up in the world. And I didn't, I think, until I went to Hoffman. until I thought of how scary it must have been for him, how he himself was trying to navigate this big, competitive Irish Catholic family, how he was trying to be a different kind of man in this family.
And I didn't have any sense of that. I just saw him as somebody who wasn't. Did you think he was weak? I did. I did. I wanted to get a different kind of a man than my father. And now you're right. Will you read that poem, I See You Now? I See You Now. You see, all I wanted was for you to stand up, to rage against it all. But now I see that wasn't your way. You had a way of doing things, a way I didn't understand. Wow.
And I didn't know that about my father. I just felt like, what is going on here? Why don't you stand up? Why don't you get us out of here? Why don't you do something? And I didn't give him... the benefit of what he actually was doing. I didn't understand him. I didn't understand the strength that he had.
And I remember thinking to myself, I need to go out and get a different kind of man than this. And that's, yeah, and you also write about... And I did. Yeah, you did. And I did. You definitely did. As I was going to say, no surprise then that you would fall in love with somebody who was the exact opposite of how you saw your father. So when you met Arnold Schwarzenegger, you were just 21 and he was 30 years old. And when you first met.
Your family just thought it was just a passing phase. Yes. And you thought, I'm going to show them. Right. And I think the more they thought it was a phase, the more I dug in. The more I was like, okay, I'm out of here. I also wanted to find my own path. I didn't want to stay. the East Coast. I didn't want to run for office. I didn't want to be in politics. I didn't want to be in politics. I didn't want to work at Special Olympics at the time. I didn't want to work in the government.
And Arnold represented for me somebody who lived on the West Coast, who had a freedom that I had never seen before. And I was like, I'm going to go over there. And when Arnold decided that he wanted to run for governor, I remember those days, you were sharply opposed to the idea. And one of the things that I remember us having this conversation at the time...
about you can run and run and run and eventually it catches up with you because this is the exact opposite life that you had been seeking for yourself. Yeah. Right. And it was what was interesting. My mother stepped in and was like, you know, don't complain here. I don't want to hear a yip out of you. Support him and carry on.
And I was, I didn't even realize. Because your mother had said, as I recall at the time, your mother was saying, if you oppose it and he ends up not doing it, he will resent you forever. Forever, yes. And I think the other thing I didn't even know. is that how triggered that was for me. What a triggering decision because I thought he's going to be shot or he's going to lose because those were my two experiences and or the public will take him away and will be left.
The kids and I left here. So my experience with politics was so traumatic that that erupted in me. So I was like, please don't go and do that. So it wasn't that I was just like, oh, I don't want you to have your dream. that there was a lot of unresolved feelings that no one had spoken to me about when he broached the subject. I remember you shared with me once, was it your...
Uncle Teddy or was it your father who had run for office and how all the people around and the campaign and it's hundreds of people. And then when you lose, you go home and there's. It's empty. And well, both of them obviously ran and both of them lost when they ran for national office. But my dad was on the ticket with McGovern and I'll never forget. you know, standing on that stage with him, and they lost so overwhelmingly. And I felt so ashamed that he had lost so...
And then when we drove home, you saw all the Secret Service unplugging all the phones, locking up the trailers. And in the morning, they were all gone. All the people that had been part of the campaign, all the secrets. for months, just gone, like that overnight. And it was an experience that I can almost call up if I close my eyes. It was so dramatic that I was like, oh. I am never going to go through this again. And by the way, I was so angry. I was so angry that...
Richard Nixon was viewed as this incredible victor, and my father was viewed as this incredible loser. And I felt that I did not want to be in a business that, you know... pigeonholed people like that, deemed winner, loser. Yes. Especially when you understood your father's value. Yes, exactly. This is the man who created the Peace Corps. Right, and what was said about him was so contrary to who he was.
And so contrary to what he was talking about. Could you imagine now? Yeah. And I just was like, I don't want to have anything to do with this business. And so I felt that Arnold was the furthest thing I could find from politics. And so I was like, oh, I'm going to go do my own thing, follow my own path. I'm going to go into journalism, which was also kind of contrary to my family. So I was like, I'm going to carve out everything differently. And then, of course, you know.
You find yourself exactly where you started, and then you have to go, okay, how did I get here? What am I actually running from? You say, too, that you have to admit that the thing that you had not wanted turned out to be one of the best things for you, because being...
First Lady of California allowed you an opportunity to reach and have a voice that could help change in a way that you hadn't before. Exactly. I mean, it turned out, obviously, I lost my job as soon as Arnold won. NBC called and said, you know, you're out. conflict of interest. It's hard to think of that today, right? When you think about they're like one, you know, a weekend, they're like, oh, no, this is a conflict of interest. You got to get out.
But it turned out to be an incredible gift to be the First Lady of California because I made lifelong friendships. I was able to meet, you know, so many people up and down the state. You had the best women's conference going yet to this date. Yeah, it was an incredible experience. And we raised so much money for so many programs and put people through school.
did so many great things, and I met so many great people. And you're right, it allowed me to speak on my own behalf, really, and obviously I was representing Arnold at the time. But I had been a journalist where you don't really have your own voice, right? And then I had grown up in a family where I didn't feel like I had my own voice. So being First Lady was the first time for me where I felt like...
I could speak out on what I wanted to speak. I could speak about women. I could speak about domestic violence. I could speak about women entrepreneurs. I had this big women's conference. I was able to speak about Alzheimer's because my dad had just been diagnosed and I had a... platform that I had never had before. And it enabled me to actually use all of the things that I had been raised with. So it brought my political.
um kind of sense was there my journalism was put to good use my curiosity my creativity all was able to be used in that one specific job. And people don't really know what a first lady does. And each state is obviously different. We only think of, I think, oftentimes the first lady of the United States. But there are incredible first ladies going on in every state and first partners.
you know, first gentleman now, but you can have tremendous impact in that role, even though it's, you're kind of part of a team. But it turned out to be something that obviously I didn't want, but turned out to be an incredible gift for me. So I have to thank Arnold for that. I thank the people of California for that. And it turned out to be a joy, really, for me. So let's talk about the other breaking open for you. The breaking open moment was the divorce, unquestionably.
Your husband had a sexual relationship with somebody who was working inside your home, and a child resulted from that relationship. You were betrayed. And you write poems here about your feelings about that. And in the introduction... You write, you say, as I sat on my 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 you.
It can't be the end of you. Make it a new beginning of you. And you write that it took you many years to get to that point to recover and that... And that's why I couldn't believe that you're putting this all in writing because I know this to be true. You literally tried every method of healing anybody has ever heard of. Yeah, I did. Yeah, you did.
I did. And you're right. It did take me a really long time. And you were there on the hotel floor. On the hotel floor. Yeah. And I really wanted to pick myself up. 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. I wanted to show my daughters and my boys that I could hold myself up, that I could put my shoulders back, that I could heal. I did not know how to heal. just started going to therapy at the end of my marriage. So I had not been someone who had been in therapy. I had not been someone who was on the healing path of life.
And I went all in. You were just being a mom with four kids and going through the thing and that. Well, I was being a daughter. I was being a journalist. I was being a mother. I was playing all the roles that I think so many people play. And it's a lot, right? Everybody that 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. I remember the night that...
the story about Arnold's betrayal was going to go public. You had known for a long time, but the night that it was going to go public was the night... that I was ending the Oprah show in 2011, and I have never seen a friend like you, because on the night that you knew that that was going to be going public... You came and you showed up for me. You showed up for me. And I don't know how you did that because you weren't even in your right mind. Were you even present in your body?
You walk out on the stage and you hug me and Gail hug me. And I remember everybody cheering because the news had just come out that morning. Well, I didn't know it was going to go public that day. Because I flew to Chicago to be with you. And when I landed, I heard. I remember you called me. I heard. And I was there with my daughters. Your two daughters. And...
But I wanted to be there for you because you had been there for me and you are one of my best friends in the world. And so I was there and then I got on a plane and left. Yeah. But that was important to me. Showing up in my life for people that I love is a big thing for me. Up next in my conversation with women's health advocate, journalist, mother and grandmother, Maria Shriver.
She explains how she got to a place of forgiveness and healing with her ex-husband, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Stay with us. in-person care or telehealth consultations to direct delivery of select Lilly medications if prescribed by a healthcare provider. Lilly Direct is committed to making your health journey more seamless. And don't forget, Lilly Direct's platform also offers well-being content. Now back to the program.
Welcome back to my special conversation with one of my longest and most precious friends, Maria Shriver. For the first time, she opens up many aspects of her extraordinary life in her new book of poetry, I Am Maria. She has some wonderful advice on forgiveness that I hope can help many of you. And then you write about in the public square, the humiliation and shame that filled your soul. Can you read that? Yeah.
The public square. Shame filled my body. Humiliation filled my soul. Every inch of my being crumbled. I stood humbled, disgraced, mortified in the public square. I heard the whispers. How could she not have known, not have seen? She must have, she couldn't have not. Poor her, poor them. I could feel the stares of pity of scorn.
I tried to meet them, but eyes turned away. I stood in the public square, a mere shadow of my former self, until I thought, no, no, this is not how it's going to go. I'm going to rebuild. I'm going to discard. I'm going to stand in all that I am and carry on. I'm going to move forward. Make no mistake. I hear you. I see you. But you'll see. Your whispers have nothing on me. And I did, you know, I really wanted to move forward and I wanted to have a good relationship with Arnold.
I wanted my children to see me moving forward. In spite of the shame and the betrayal, you wanted a good relationship. I did, because I had been with Arnold since I was 21. He's the father of my children. I wanted to be able to go to... our kids' weddings, when they have kids. I wanted to be the person that could be in the room and everybody would be okay.
And that was really important to me. Well, this is what's so powerful about all the poems that you've written. And also, so many times over the years, and on this podcast, we talk about forgiveness and how you... Forgive for yourself. And you write in the section on healing, you write these three lines. If I forgive me, I can forgive him. I can forgive her. And so it is all. forgiven we are all free to go i mean what did it take for you to get to well i think you know one of my uh
shamans or therapists said to me, before you can talk about forgiving another person, you have to look at forgiving yourself. And you have to go back and look at your own life and think about how hard you've been on yourself and how... judgmental you've been of yourself and begin the process of forgiving yourself. That's really some elevated thinking because most people in the midst of betrayal are just...
trying to get through the next day. Well, I think it's a long process. You know, it's a long process. But I think if you begin to think about... how tough you've been on yourself, how judgmental you've been on yourself, how hard you've been on yourself. Because did you go through what a lot of women go through? I'm asking this, but I know the answer. Did you go through...
What else I could have done? It could have been better and I wasn't a good enough wife. And if I had done this differently and that differently. Yes. For years. Yes. Yes, absolutely. What did I miss? And to, I think, Arnold's credit, he's like, nothing. There's nothing you could have done better. And, of course, I kept going around and around, you know.
And I think that that's normal. And I think it took me a really long time to forgive myself, to forgive the whole situation. Did you have to forgive yourself for... Also, what you didn't see, because I think one of the things you talk about in The Whispers, one of the things that was so loudly whispered...
And I would get so frustrated when people would say this to me. Well, you know, that's what the Kennedy women do. Yeah, so I'd love to rectify that. That's what the Kennedy women do. Kennedy women, first of all, I'm a Shriver. Yeah. I'm Maria. Yeah. But this idea of, quote, the Kennedy women, Kennedy women are strong. Kennedy women keep the family together. Kennedy, so many of those kids, whether it was Ethel or Jackie, were single mothers raising their kids.
So to any woman who's been a single... But you've heard that, this idea that... Of course I've heard it. I've heard everything. You've heard everything. I've heard everything. And I'd say 90% of what I've heard, 95%, is never true. And I think I grew up with that also, like to pay no attention to what you hear about anybody. So and I think, you know.
That had something to do with how I ended up where I ended up because I never paid any attention to what I heard. So I think that that always drove me crazy to be referred to that way. because it wasn't true. And I considered myself and do consider myself a strong woman. And I have met so many women.
And I've met many men, right, who go through heartbreak wherever it is in life and find a healing path forward. And that's the conversation I'm interested in having with people because I think it's... There's nobody who gets out of life without heartbreak. There's nobody who can stand at 70 and 80 and feel... healed or feel like they're in the healing journey, who doesn't try to process forgiveness, who doesn't go down that path. And that's the point of this book, is for not to...
talk about my own story as much as kind of our universal heartbreak. And that's a way into conversations with other people. I think Arnold and I have a great relationship now. And I think there will always be a love there, right? As you said, I met him when I was 21 years old. He's the father of my children. We're grandparents together. And I don't want to have, you know, hate. I don't want to have anger in my body towards another person. I don't want that in my life at all. I don't.
And I don't. There's so many events where you absolutely have to be together. Yeah, I didn't want my kids to have separate birthday parties. I didn't want them to stress about when they were going to get married, stress about. when they would have a child. I didn't want what happened between their dad and me to, you know, ruin their lives. It already causes a rupture in their life, right? But I wanted to model for them.
a new way forward. And I hope they don't get divorced because I believe in marriage. But I want them to know that you can do it well. Well, I think that's very rare and it takes a special kind of person to do that and to want to do that and to not to use what had happened to you to turn the children against their father. No.
Not for one second did you do that. No, and I'm not saying, you know, every situation is different. So I think, you know, there are many people who can't be in the room and I respect that. There are many people who don't want to be in the room. Yeah. And I respect. that too, who don't want to be at the same birthday party, who don't want to have anything to do with the other person. I understand that. And people have told me unbelievable stories.
you know, have come up to me a lot about the ends of their marriage marriages. And so I think everybody has their own path. And I would never say that my way. is the right way. I can only say that this has been right for me and it has been right for my children. You talked about the two of you having grandchildren together. Your grandchildren call you Mama G. How is being a Mama G different than being a mama? Well, you know, you have more time.
They're not living with you, right? You're not in charge, which I'm told repeatedly. So I just play and have fun, and I want to help my daughter. I didn't live in the same city as my mother when I had children. And I really regret that, actually. I see how wonderful it is for Catherine and Chris that they have their whole family around and are together all the time. So I have a play date.
you know, myself with my grandchildren. And I just, I love being a grand, I feel so blessed. I loved you bringing them here the last time you brought them here. Yeah. There's a video of you and Patrick. that went viral this year. It's where he's telling you that he got the part in White Lotus. You got it! What's it like watching your son have a moment like this? Well, I'm so...
proud of him. I'm really proud of all of the kids, you know that. And he has worked so hard. He's been in acting classes every single week for like 10, 11 years. And he really wanted to do his acting on his own. You know, there's all this neeple baby, neeple baby. And he specifically didn't want to go and get a job. in one of his dad's films. He wanted to do little films. He wanted to do independent films. He wanted to find his own way. He goes out. You know, you see the role he got, but...
Hundreds he didn't get, you know, every week he's like not getting a job, not getting a job, not getting a job. So when he said. you know, I'm going to audition for White Lotus. He goes, but don't talk to me about it because you know I probably won't get it. Everybody's auditioning for White Lotus. And I was like, oh, okay. And then he never said a word about it.
So I just, you know, I didn't want to say anything because I figured he didn't get the job because he doesn't get most of the jobs, right? And so when he said it, he said it in a restaurant on vacation. I screamed so loud. You said, like, out of the tears. I was just beside myself because I was like, I was just so happy for him. I was so excited that he was going to get this opportunity.
That's why that video blew up, because it was so natural. Everybody knew that that was a real, real moment. Because I could see he and his fiancée, who had just gotten engaged, were kind of whispering. I thought, what's going on? What's going on? They're like, no, we don't.
want to say anything i'm like they're pregnant oh my god they're going to be pregnant before the way you know they're like no no no we're not pregnant i'm like well what is it you got you can't just sit here and whisper in front of me
And then when he said that, I was just like, you know, I was like levitated off. And Catherine started crying and she didn't even know what we were talking about. She didn't even know he had auditioned because he didn't want anybody. So she's like, what are we crying about? And I was like, Patrick got a role in White Lotus. And I didn't know anything. I still don't know anything about the role. Hey, we saw you guys on the boat earlier. You know, and Mike White, who's the creator of that whole...
It's just so fun to watch. It's so fun. And his character, I have to keep now saying, like, he's not the character. He's not that guy. He's not that guy. But it's a great moment. But he also has his feet firmly planted on the ground that he knows. You know, this is a moment and then you'll have to go out and get another job and then you'll have to go out and get another job and then it'll go like this. And I think he saw his dad go through that. He's seen people.
Um, he knows and respect, you know, they have a moment and then they don't and then they have a moment and then they don't. And what do you have in your life that keeps you? in those moments when you're not having a moment do you have your family do you have other interests do you have faith do you have a gratitude practice do you have friends that love you for you these are the things that i try to stress to the kids
all the time. And I think he saw his dad go through that. And I think he has a pretty good head on his shoulders, but he also knows that, you know, it's a long road. He's young. Well, you have done such a beautiful job raising your children. I mean, I know you have all of these different roles, but your primary role, even as your friend, as I see, has been that you have been... The mother that raised...
generous and kind children, which is a very hard thing to do in today's world. Well, I wanted to raise kids. It was the priority. And it continues to be my priority. I wanted them first and foremost to feel loved. I wanted them to feel... Like they were the priority. I didn't get, I wanted them. I believe that they do. There's no reason why they shouldn't. I've seen it over and over. That was really important to me that they felt loved, that they knew what love was.
that their being wasn't less important than maybe what their dad was doing or what their larger family was doing. That's right. That they were the priority and that they were loved. for who they were, not for what they did. I certainly got the lesson that love was attached to accomplishment. And so I wanted to do the opposite of that. There were many things that my mother and father did that I wanted and did emulate.
but there were many things that I wanted to do differently. What are the best lessons? What is the thing that your mother gave to you that you feel that you're passing on? To your children. Strength. She gave me incredible strength. She gave me incredible faith. She gave me the lesson of family.
The importance that family is everything. And she would always say, you can have an argument with your brothers, but you cannot be forever mad at your brothers. You know, they are what you have. And she showed me her brothers and her sisters were her best friends. And she showed me that. And she showed me even, you know, I remember when my Uncle Teddy got divorced, she stayed in relationship with my Aunt Joan.
She stayed in relationship with my Aunt Jackie. She stayed in the family, keeping the family together, laughing with her family and prioritizing her family. She gave me that. She gave me... She gave me so much. She gave me a firm belief that I was here for something larger than myself. And you write a poem about the fact that...
It was an appointment of tribute, the fact that you were able to explore and touch your vulnerability and femininity in a way that she was not allowed or certainly didn't feel that she could. Never. And I have such... I remember when she was dying, I took her hand and, you know, my mother wasn't somebody that touched you and didn't hug you or that just wasn't her way. Neither was it my grandmother's way.
And I remember taking her hand and saying, you know, you did such an incredible job. You know, I love you and you can go because my brothers and I were connected. We're tight. We're good. You did a great job. And I want you to know that. And, you know, she died like 24 hours later. But as you know, she was really everything to me. And her voice was tough.
Her voice was tough, but I know it was tough on her too. Yeah. Now you know that more than ever. Now I know that. I know how tough she was on herself. And for 10 years, your dad struggled with Alzheimer's. I just so appreciate the poem that you did for over a decade when you watched it. watched him descend into Alzheimer's. Yeah. And you write about this in the piece called Deep Inside. Can you read that? Who knows what lurks within? The unknowing, the knowing all are one.
Who are you, he says. I'm Maria, your daughter. And the light within his eyes flashes. A smile crosses his face. Oh, wow, says he. I always wanted a daughter named Maria. That's all true. You know, he'd be constantly saying to me, who are you? And I'd say, I'm your daughter, Maria. He's like, you're my daughter? I go, yeah, I'm your daughter.
I'm Maria. What was that like for you to watch him? Mind-blowing. Disappear like that. Yeah, mind-blowing. I use that word. Sometimes people don't like that word associated with Alzheimer's because... you know, your brain is going. But it's a mind-blowing disease, which is why I've really spent 20-plus years trying to find a cure for it, trying to educate people about it. I started nonprofits. I've done documentaries. I've done...
Everything you can do to try to find a cure for Alzheimer's, to try to help other families going through it. So when you're with a person who I've never talked to anybody who I knew. as well as I do you, about a family member going through it. When they first start to not to know who you are, do you feel that they are still who they are? No.
And that's, I think I learned from my children, you know, it was a struggle for me and it's different for parents. You know, it's different for spouses. They have their own journey. That's what I've learned is that when you... Everybody in a family has a different journey with the person who has Alzheimer's, but you want them to be who they were. And you can't, you know, it was very hard for me to see my father, who was the smartest human being I had ever met.
playing with puzzles that my two- and three-year-olds were playing with. I couldn't compute that. It just made no sense to me at all. And my kids were really helpful to me. They were like... Just accept him for who he is. You know, if he wants to play a puzzle, let him play a puzzle. If he wants to just sit there in the yard and not speak, just sit in the yard. And so...
That was really a challenge for me. It was a challenge for me to watch him become a different person. It was a challenge for me to watch him not be who he was. And I think for everybody who has a loved one going through Alzheimer's, it's a really challenging disease. It's incredibly expensive. It's spiritually draining. It's emotionally draining. It's exhausting.
And it has yet to become kind of a national priority, which I've tried and many other people have tried to make it so. And the numbers are astounding, the amount of people that... are getting it. And we know so much more about it today than we did with women. It's more prevalent than way more prevalent with women. And yet we have no.
research into women's brains or women's bodies or women's health journeys. And I'm trying to change that with my women's Alzheimer's movement is to really try to understand particularly what's happening in women's minds. brains at midlife. You write though in I Am Maria that you sometimes still struggle to be truly at peace with yourself. Yeah. Did writing I Am Maria...
bring you a sense of peace? Yes, I find myself in many days being at peace, right? And it's a total inside job. So some days I'm kinder to myself than others. Some days I feel... better about myself. I don't feel like...
totally healed or I got to the mountaintop. You don't? No. On a given day, I can. But then, like, maybe two days later, I hear my mother's voice, like, move it along. Let's go. What do you do? I don't want to hear a yip out of you. I don't want to hear, you know. And so I think it's about... It's a balance of understanding what I want in my life, where I am in my life. I make time in my life now for...
going and having fun, going and looking at the leaves. Maria and I are strength training together at the gym. That's right. We looked at the leaves together. Those are things I wouldn't never have done when my mother was alive because I would have been... Yes. Too scared to tell her that I'm doing nothing but looking at the leaves with Oprah. I would have been she would have been like.
what yeah remember that night somebody you were talking about a friend who was going to take a vacation that's right themselves yeah and your father was like whoever heard of such a thing yes and you're like i didn't say i was doing it yeah i was like afraid So I feel that I'm now much kinder to myself. I'm kinder to other people. I'm more open with myself. I'm gentler with myself. Do you think you understand now? I ask this question often on this podcast.
Do you think you understand now, have a greater understanding now of what it means to have a well-lived life? Absolutely. Yeah. And I'm in it. I am in it 100%, and that's my goal, to be, as I say, in the open field. I call it a wildly authentic, deeply meaningful life. Yeah, I was just going to say, you end with the piece titled The Open Field, and you say...
I'll meet you there. And what I believe, can you hand me the book, please? What I believe is that all of these beautiful stories you tell through your poetry...
are going to open up the hearts of other people to see themselves. Yeah, I hope so. That's why I did it. I wrote it because I wanted people to... know that their heartbreak does not define them, that they can survive, that they can heal, and that they can find their way home to themselves, that they can be a better, more evolved version of themselves, that they can look at their life kind of with a...
deep appreciation, all of it, everything that happened to them, that they can look at the people in their life with love, with acceptance, with... you know, this great appreciation. That's kind of where I find myself. And the open field is what? It represents what you mean? Well, the open field for me represents, you know, it's a riff off of Rumi, you know, where I'll meet you there. It means I'm out beyond shame.
I'm out beyond the public square. I'm out beyond guilt. I'm out beyond fear. And I'm standing there with people who love me, who accept me, who love me for just being Maria. They don't love me for the family I came from, for the job that I'm doing. They love me for me. And I'm standing there, I hope, with my children who have love in their lives, who have partners with them, with my friends who have been there with me the whole way through. On the hotel room floor. On the hotel room floor.
up yeah and and uh and i'm and i'm there and i'm like wow this was one hell of a life this was one hell of a ride and i all of it the good the bad the ugly all of it and all of it made me me today. And I feel more at home in myself today than I have ever felt in my entire life. I understand myself better. I love my parents at such a deep level.
I love my brothers. I love my friends. I love my kids. I'm grateful for every step of the way. And I'm hopeful that I have more years to come where I'm going to do things I've never done. And have experiences I've never had. The fact that you have written a book of poetry, Maria. Yeah, I know. Could you believe it? This is something you have never done.
I thank you and I know that so many people are going to find comfort. And I know you would appreciate this because you and I both love Mary Oliver. Yes. And I have Mary Oliver's poems. The journey. Her book Devotion. Oh, yes. The Devotion book by my bedside. And now this will go by my backseat. I am Maria. Do you know that you sent me to go? I was the guest editor.
I don't know if you remember this, for a month of poetry for a poetry edition of O Magazine. Yes, I do, I do. And I went down, I had become friends with Mary Oliver and I went for O Magazine. Yes, you interviewed Mary Oliver. And I interviewed Mary Oliver for the magazine down in...
florida and when i was first lady i had been trying to get her to come to the women's conference and she's like i don't do that i don't do that stop calling me stop bothering me i said but the journey the poem the journey it changed my life and It got me thinking I could write poetry. She said, do your thing. I'm not coming for you. And I went to meet her. I went to listen to her, read her poetry. I went and introduced myself and I said, you know.
I'm your biggest fan, please. And she's like, okay, just stop with me already. Stop bothering me. And she came to the women's conference. She read The Journey. She goes, I'll read one poem for you. I said, please read The Journey because The Journey changed my life. And it made me think, what do I want to do with my one wild and precious life? And I knew when I was on the floor of the hotel, my one wild precious life was not ending there.
My one wild and precious life was going to be in the open field. And so when I told her I was writing poetry and I read some of it to her, she said, you're going to publish a book of poems. Carry on. Mary Oliver said that to you. Mary Oliver. So Mary Oliver and Emily Dickinson. You know, I've got a lantern and I'm out there looking for myself. I'm like, yeah, me too, Emily. Me too. So those women really...
With their words, poetry changed my life. Reading other women's poems and men's poems, too, changed my life. And I'm hoping that these poems will help people look within their own lives and will... assure them that they have the strength that they need within to carry on. Maria. You've got Americans reading poetry. That is a very big deal. That's a big deal. Maria's book is called I Am Maria, My Reflections and Poems on Heartbreak, Healing and Finding Your Way Home. It's available April 1st.
anywhere you buy books, and Maria reads the audio version. I thank you to Lily Direct for presenting today's episode, and I want to personally thank you, all our dear listeners, for joining us here. Talk to you next week. I am Maria. Go well, everybody. You can subscribe to The Oprah Podcast on YouTube and follow us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. I'll see you next week. Thanks, everybody.