Maria
Appearances
The Deck
Sharon Jones (10 of Spades, Florida)
Well, what happened, I don't know. But I can tell you what happened, what I seen. Okay?
The Deck
Sharon Jones (10 of Spades, Florida)
We went in and the agreement was she was going to trick Neesmith for drugs.
The Deck
Sharon Jones (10 of Spades, Florida)
But we all started smoking because she was so high. She was paranoid and shaky. And he was pushing her to, come on, take your clothes off. You know, he wanted to have sex. And she was so high, you know, she kept telling, wait, wait, wait, wait. And he was waiting. And she was really, really high. And like, we heard a noise. And then when we opened the door, he had slapped her.
The Deck
Sharon Jones (10 of Spades, Florida)
It's something I try to forget about. I don't remember, but I know he hit her. He hit her.
The Deck
Sharon Jones (10 of Spades, Florida)
Neesmith. When he hit her, Sharon hit the floor and, like, passed out.
The Deck
Sharon Jones (10 of Spades, Florida)
He was mad. Okay. He was really mad and I went, when I went in to say something, he told me to shut up or he was going to hit me too.
The Deck
Sharon Jones (10 of Spades, Florida)
I know that Neesmith went to grab her up and the other guy had her feet.
The Deck
Sharon Jones (10 of Spades, Florida)
And they said, because I said, where are you going? Where are you going? And they said that she was really f***ed up and they were taking her home.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Millions Spent on Crucial Special Elections, New Columbia Tension, Trump Warns Putin: AM Update 3/31
We're on the third Columbia University president. And this one, let's be honest, Maria, is not going to last as well.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Millions Spent on Crucial Special Elections, New Columbia Tension, Trump Warns Putin: AM Update 3/31
We're on the third Columbia University president. And this one, let's be honest, Maria, is not going to last as well. It's already come out that she is criticized and belittled. the House investigation and the accountability measures and has failed to protect Jewish students. So again, this is strong leadership from President Trump.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Millions Spent on Crucial Special Elections, New Columbia Tension, Trump Warns Putin: AM Update 3/31
And I think it is only going to be a matter of weeks before she is forced to step down as well. They still don't get it. The faculty doesn't get it. These radical far left students doesn't get it.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
We were talking, 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.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
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 in any way? Because I didn't get that as a kid.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
Well, my mother was sick pretty much all my life. And I think people didn't realize that really about her. No. 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.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
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.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
And I grew up like that. And I started to think later in life, like, what was she doing? doing behind those padded doors what was she trying to keep out what was she afraid of and um it 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.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
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?
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
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.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
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.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
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 it was in my 20s or 30s or somebody would ask me how I feel. And I'd be like, fine. What? What do you mean? How do I feel? I don't know how I feel. Just keep going. Let's keep working.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
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.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
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.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
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.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
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 people 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.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
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, you know. With a greater sense of empathy. With empathy, 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?
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
Yeah, I See You Now. I didn't, you know, 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.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
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.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
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. I wanted you to speak your mind, to yell out loud. I wanted you to take charge. but you had a different plan. You had your own way. Wow. And I didn't know that about my father.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
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.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
And that's, yeah, and you also write about... And I did. Yeah, you did.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
Right. And I think the more they thought it was a phase, the more I dug in, the more I was like, OK, I'm out of here. I also wanted to find my own path. I didn't want to stay on the East Coast. I didn't want to run for office. You didn't want to be in politics. Yeah, 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.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
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.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
Yeah. And 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.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
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 we'll be left, the kids and I left here. So my experience with politics was so traumatic that that erupted in me.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
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. It was that there was a lot of unresolved feelings that no one had spoken to me about when he broached the subject.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
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, that he had lost so big. And then when we drove home, you saw all the Secret Service unplugging all the phones, locking up the trailers.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
And in the morning, they were all gone. All the people that had been part of the campaign, all the... For months. 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.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
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.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
Yes, exactly.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
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. Politics. And so I was like, oh, I'm going to go do my own thing, follow my own path.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
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, OK, how did I get here? What am I actually running from?
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
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. So 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've got to get out.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
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 and did so many great things.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
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.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
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
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
And it enabled me to actually use all of the things that I had been raised with. So it brought my political 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.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
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 and, you know, first gentlemen now. But you can have tremendous impact in that role, even though 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.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
So I have to thank Arnold for that. I have to thank the people of California for that. And it turned out to be a joy, really, for me.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
Yeah, I did.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
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.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
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. I had 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.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
You were just being a mom with four kids and going through the thing. 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.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
Oh, thank you. Well, I'm so honored to have you as my friend. And 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.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
Thank you.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
And we lived in the same apartment complex. We lived in the same apartment complex. We shopped at the same supermarket. We ate in the same supermarket. That's right.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
Thank you.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
Yes, in Baltimore. In the supermarket, very glamorous. But the idea of having such a long friendship, you see someone through a marriage. You were in my wedding. I was in your wedding, yes. All my children. You were there when I got separated. You were there when I got divorced. You're there for me now.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
Thank you.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. You know, and Mike White, who's the creator of that whole series. 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.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
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? Yes. 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.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
And you were there for me. 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...
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
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 amen 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 so but how would you describe it I'd say it's really an exploration of my life.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
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 he knows and respect. You know, they have a moment and then they don't.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
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.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
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.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
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 believe that they all day do.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
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.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
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...
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
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.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
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 so much. She gave me a firm belief that I was here for something larger than myself.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
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?
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
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 she 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.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
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.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
Now you know that more than ever. Now I know that. I know how tough she was on herself.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
alzheimer's yeah and you write about this in 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?
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
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 to just disappear like that? Yeah, mind-blowing. I use that word. Sometimes people don't like that word associated with Alzheimer's because...
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
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.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
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.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
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 just, 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.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
You know, 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.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
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.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
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. And women, it's more prevalent than... It's way more prevalent with women. And yet we have no research into women's brains or women's bodies or women's health journeys.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
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.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
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.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
Yes, I find myself 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.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
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 are you doing? I don't want to hear a yip-yip. I don't want to hear you. And so I think it's a balance. 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.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
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... Too scared to tell her I'm doing nothing but looking at the leaves with Oprah. She would have been like, what?
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
Yes. And you're like, I didn't say I was doing it. I was like afraid, right? So I feel, you know, 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.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
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.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
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.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
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?
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
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.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
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? And I'd say, well... I'm a Shriver. I'm a Shriver. They're like, 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?
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
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 and up. Yeah. And and 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.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
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 like. 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.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
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 Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
The Journey.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
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. And I went down. I had become friends with Mary Oliver and I went for, 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.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
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.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
And she's like, okay, I'll 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?
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
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. And Mary Oliver said, Mary Oliver.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
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 OK to be myself, claim my own identity, I am. So my mother named me. 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.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
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.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
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.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
And who is that?
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
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 loved.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
Yeah, big time. You know, you were there. Yes. Hiding in the bathroom.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
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 to the meal. I would come prepared to dinner. And I had the feeling that that's what was expected of me.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
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... Meditation Bob. Meditation Bob. He came to the hotel. Yeah. And he said, I'm going to teach you how to meditate.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
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.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
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.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
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?
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
I just started writing. Well, you know.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
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 you know 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
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
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 out of me.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
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, and then 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
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
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, okay, 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.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
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 leaders, world leaders.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
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. 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.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
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.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
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 I don't think she did it to be mean. She did it to just keep it moving.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
No, there's never a conversation about any of it.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
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 two 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.
The Oprah Podcast
Oprah & Maria Shriver on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home
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.
The Oprah Podcast
Amy Griffin Confronts Her Darkest Secret in “The Tell”
Maria? Hi. Here's the story that I think is so interesting. And it's this theme of perfection. So for me, from the very beginning of the story to the very end, it's this thread of perfection and the difficulty of perfection. And I have the privilege of working with some extraordinary women leaders in Chicagoland. And I see this thread in all of them.
The Oprah Podcast
Amy Griffin Confronts Her Darkest Secret in “The Tell”
This level of everything looks perfect sometimes from the outside, but everyone is dealing with various levels of trauma. And it doesn't have to be as profound trauma. and tragic as your trauma was, but people are dealing with experiences and trauma. And it's such a reminder of we cannot judge others.
The Oprah Podcast
Amy Griffin Confronts Her Darkest Secret in “The Tell”
We have to remember that everyone has experiences and the experiences is what gives them life, is what makes them have a powerful and impactful life, but to give us grace. And so thank you.