Maria Shriver Unearths She Went to a Convent After Arnold Schwarzenegger Damage up to ‘Explore Advice’

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

All thru Shriver’s look on the Making Set aside aside of dwelling with Hoda Kotb podcast Monday, the journalist knowledgeable host Hoda Kotb that she began feeling like 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 like, ‘Oh I would better dash and resolve out like, what is the truth?’ ” Shriver, 67, acknowledged on the podcast. “I went to a convent — I did so many things — but undoubtedly likely the most things I did is I went to a convent, a cloistered convent, to be in silence and undercover agent advice.”

The journalist and writer shared that the convent’s Reverend Mother gave her permission “to exit and turn into Maria,” for the length of her consult with — something she acknowledged she’s never printed sooner than.

“The Reverend Mother there acknowledged to me at the very cease, she acknowledged — and I in fact absorb written about this, but I haven’t shared — she acknowledged, ‘I non-public to receive right here right here attempting to get permission,’ ” Shriver knowledgeable Kotb, 58.

Maria Shriver; Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Rodin Eckenroth/Getty; Alex Bona/SOPA Photos/LightRocket through Getty

“I felt like I was in a scene out of The Sound of Music,” she added. “She says, ‘Which that chances are you’ll well presumably no longer reach dwell right here, but you enact absorb permission to exit and turn into Maria.’ I was like, sobbing. I was like, ‘Who is that?’ ”

Jon Kopaloff/FilmMagic

“I non-public the be aware permission… I had never given myself permission to in actuality feel, to be susceptible, to be used, to be dropped at my knees, and the world did it to me,” Shriver acknowledged of the ride. “After which I was like, ‘K, God, let’s dash. I’m gonna rob this and be taught all the pieces I’m able to about my feature and what I absorb to be taught.’ ”

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In a quantity of areas in the interview, Shriver acknowledged that every her indispensable upbringing as a member of the Kennedy family and her marriage to Schwarzenegger, 75, continuously made her in actuality feel “invisible.”

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“I would get myself getting angry at of us who came up and didn’t acknowledge that I existed when I was standing subsequent to Arnold, or when I was standing subsequent to my uncle or anyone,” she knowledgeable Kotb.

Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver marry in 1986.
Bettman/Getty Photos

“After which I [realized] they were instructing me a lesson that or no longer it’s no longer about whether they undercover agent me,” she added. “Originate I undercover agent me? Am I viewed to me?”

Shriver and Terminator huge name Schwarzenegger first met in August 1977 at the Robert F. Kennedy Tennis Tournament after being presented by NBC’s Tom Brokaw. The worn couple married in 1986 and had four youth 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 but any other son, Joseph Baena, 25, with the family’s longtime housekeeper Mildred Baena.

The worn couple’s divorce used to be finalized in December 2021; Shriver and Schwarzenegger absorb remained unified as a family since their breakup. In September, they posed with son Patrick Schwarzenegger at a birthday dinner in a characterize shared to his Instagram after his 29th birthday.