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Maria Shriver is opening up about a difficult moment in her life, after filing for divorce from Arnold Schwarzenegger in July 2011. During a recent interview with Hoda Kotb, Maria revealed that after 25 years of marriage, she was looking for advice and visited a convent in hopes of finding the right answer.
“I first felt like, ‘Oh I’d better go and figure out like, what is the truth?’” she explained. “I went to a convent — I did so many things — but one of the things I did is I went to a convent, a cloistered convent, to be in silence and look for advice.”
It was during her visit to the convent that she decided it was time to start a new chapter of her life, as the Reverend Mother said she had to “go out and become Maria.” However she had trouble finding herself, “You can’t come live here, but you do have permission to go out and become Maria.”
“Who is that?” Maria responded, admitting that she was very emotional at the time. “I think the word permission… I had never given myself permission to feel, to be vulnerable, to be weak, to be brought to my knees, and the world did it to me,“ Maria continued, “Okay, God, let’s go. I’m gonna take this and learn everything I can about my role and what I need to learn.‘”
The former couple met in August 1977 and went on to marry in 1986, expanding their family and welcoming four children together, Katherine, Christina, Patrick and Christopher. Two months before filing for divorce, Arnold revealed that he had another son, Joseph Baena, with the family’s housekeeper Mildred Baena.