Maria Shriver Finds She Went to a Convent After Arnold Schwarzenegger Damage up to ‘Peek for Advice’

Maria Shriver sought out lifestyles advice at a convent after her marriage to Arnold Schwarzenegger ended.

For the length of Shriver’s appearance on the Making Explain with Hoda Kotb podcast Monday, the journalist told host Hoda Kotb that she began feeling be pleased she “had the freedom or permission” to be herself when she filed for divorce from Schwarzenegger in July 2011, after 25 years of marriage.

“I first felt be pleased, ‘Oh I’d higher shuffle and determine be pleased, what’s the very fact?’ ” Shriver, 67, acknowledged on the podcast. “I went to a convent — I did so many things — but a number of the things I did is I went to a convent, a cloistered convent, to be in silence and peep advice.”

The journalist and creator shared that the convent’s Reverend Mom gave her permission “to head out and turn out to be Maria,” all through her shuffle to — one thing she acknowledged she’s never revealed sooner than.

“The Reverend Mom there acknowledged to me on the very discontinuance, she acknowledged — and I really dangle written about this, but I haven’t shared — she acknowledged, ‘I have to dangle right here right here shopping for permission,’ ” Shriver told Kotb, 58.

“I felt be pleased I used to be in a scene out of The Sound of Tune,” she added. “She says, ‘You would possibly per chance per chance well be in a establish to’t reach stay right here, but you enact dangle permission to head out and turn out to be Maria.’ I used to be be pleased, sobbing. I used to be be pleased, ‘Who is that?’ ”

“I have the observe permission… I had never given myself permission to truly feel, to be weak, to be worn, to be introduced to my knees, and the world did it to me,” Shriver acknowledged of the trip. “And then I used to be be pleased, ‘Ample, God, let’s shuffle. I’m gonna design discontinuance this and be taught every part I will be capable to about my position and what I dangle to be taught.’ ”

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In totally different locations in the interview, Shriver acknowledged that every her necessary upbringing as a member of the Kennedy household and her marriage to Schwarzenegger, 75, in most cases made her really feel “invisible.”

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“I could well fetch myself getting offended at of us that came up and did now not acknowledge that I existed when I used to be standing subsequent to Arnold, or when I used to be standing subsequent to my uncle or somebody,” she told Kotb.

“And then I [realized] they were teaching me a lesson that or no longer it’s no longer about whether or no longer they appear me,” she added. “Enact I look me? Am I viewed to me?”

Shriver and Terminator star Schwarzenegger first met in August 1977 on the Robert F. Kennedy Tennis Match after being presented by NBC’s Tom Brokaw. The ragged couple married in 1986 and had four kids collectively: daughters Katherine, 33, and Christina, 31, and sons Patrick, 29, and Christopher, 25.

Shriver filed for divorce in July 2011 after 25 years of marriage. Two months sooner than the filing, Schwarzenegger publicly admitted he had fathered yet any other son, Joseph Baena, 25, with the household’s longtime housekeeper Mildred Baena.

The ragged couple’s divorce used to be finalized in December 2021; Shriver and Schwarzenegger dangle remained unified as a household since their breakup. In September, they posed with son Patrick Schwarzenegger at a birthday dinner in a photo shared to his Instagram after his twenty ninth birthday.