Who

Maria Shriver is a Peabody and Emmy Award-winning journalist and producer. She is the author of seven New York Times bestselling books, the former First Lady of California, an NBC News Special Anchor, founder of Shriver Media, The Women’s Alzheimer’s Movement, co-founder of the brain health brand MOSH, and the publisher of The Open Field. When she’s not thinking or writing, she can be found hanging with her kids and grandkids.

What

A book like no other, I Am Maria weaves Shriver’s hard-earned wisdom with her own deeply personal poetry. I Am Maria reminds readers there is strength and love on the other side of all of our hardest days.

Why

Shriver says she wrote I Am Maria because “I believe we all carry a hunger to express our truth. We yearn to be our true selves and to discover who and what that really means. There is a yearning within each of us to embrace both our wildness and our fire, to be vulnerable and strong, and to feel that every part of us is enough. For me, digging deep to get in touch with the many sides of myself was liberating, exciting, and inspiring. Poetry helped unearth a part of myself that I had buried. It unleashed a voice and a sense of being that felt unknown at first, but that eventually felt like home.”

“I hope my words inspire others to not wait as long as I did to feel at home within themselves. I hope these poems encourage readers to get quiet, look within, and find a voice they didn’t even know they had.”

& We

…chose I Am Maria because these deeply personal poems offer a guide to navigating our own life path. It is an invitation to let go of the critical voice within, embrace every part of yourself, and discover the healing power of forgiveness and self-compassion. Enjoy!

Here’s Your Exclusive Excerpt

And so, here we are. Everywhere I seem to look these days, I see people suffering from pain and heartbreak. Struggle and loneliness. I sense a yearning for something different, something more spiritual. What is often feels fragile and uncertain, and everything we thought we knew about ourselves and the world seems to change by the day. We are told these are unprecedented times, but I think this is simply life.

In this time of constant change and constant noise, each of us has an opportunity for introspection, an awakening, and a more fulfilling life. All of the old rules are gone, which means it’s a good time for each and every one of us to dig deep and ask ourselves why am I here, what is my purpose, who do I want to become, how do I want to leave a mark on this world, and do I have the courage to examine and possibly alter old beliefs that may be keeping me stuck in a life I’m not meant to be in?

Life offers a full range of experiences and emotions to each of us. No one escapes the forces and events we are sure will break us. But understanding that those same events are as much a part of one’s life as achieving our dreams—getting that perfect job, falling in love, having a baby—is a valuable life lesson. Having a full, meaningful life means embracing the whole of life—the perceived bad as well as the perceived good.

That’s the goal of my poetry: to embrace the whole of life. To awaken, to unearth, and to evolve and grow in a new direction. One’s own. My hope is that these poems spark a desire within you to write your own way to a deeper understanding of your childhood, your purpose, your life, and the lives of others. And my hope is that you don’t wait as long as I did to be kind to yourself and others, to be tender with yourself and others, and to allow yourself to see yourself as worthy and enough.

I also hope you, too, will write poetry from the front lines of your own life, because I’ve learned this: Poetry doesn’t belong only to the lofty and idolized figures of the past centuries or even to those English majors who study them! Poetry belongs to all of us. I believe there’s poetry within all of us. It’s an awe-generating craft. It’s a healing tool—for each of us and the world.

After finishing the first draft of this manuscript in summer 2023, I traveled to Hyannisport, Massachusetts. This was the place where, for many years, I spent summers with my parents, my brothers, and my extended family. 

My time in Hyannisport growing up was fun, but it was also highly volatile and very patriarchal. At times, it was actually quite dysfunctional, chaotic, and often felt unsafe.

Visiting Hyannisport used to trigger me. As soon as I’d land, I could feel my body tense up. I went on high alert. I was always ready to defend myself and to compete. Being there felt like survival of the fittest.

But something unexpected happened on my trip that summer. I felt a new feeling overcome me. I actually felt happy there. I felt present. I felt free. I had fun and enjoyed quality time with my family and extended family. I felt their love, their acceptance, and their joy. I felt seen for who I was. I felt at home.

I can’t tell you how big this was for me. All the interior work I’ve done—all the excavating and peeling back of my layers—allowed me to stand there amidst my family, put my heart on the line, and feel unafraid that someone would trample over me. My trip home that summer allowed me to feel love and feel like I belonged. I felt safe. That was huge.

Now, just because I was able to finally have this moment doesn’t mean my quest for myself is over. Nor does it mean that I’ll never go back into the lion’s den and feel triggered again. But it does mean that the old stories that kept me away for years have finally been buried. It means that the version of me that had my fists up all the time—ready to fight, ready to defend—no longer needs to live on guard.

I now feel like I can walk into this next chapter of my life with my heart leading me forward.

Before I left Massachusetts, I went to visit my parents, who are buried side by side. I sat and spoke to them individually and as a team. I know they both wish they could have been different at times. As did I.

For years, it was hard for me to understand them and their choices. I spent a lot of time feeling unseen, unprotected, and alone while also still deeply loving them for being my parents. It was confusing to feel so many different things. Deep down, I think I was angry that I felt I had to suit up and be tough and “on” all the time. And yet, suiting up is exactly what helped me survive so many challenges in my life. It’s also what led me to where I’m at now.

So today instead of being angry at my parents, I feel so much love for them, which makes me happy. My poetry has helped me unearth my childhood. I’ve taken off the sheath that I dragged with me all those decades. It may have gotten me here, but it didn’t allow me to feel the love I craved, desired, and wanted.

Today, I also feel I understand my parents as human beings far better than I ever did before. I’m hopeful they understand me better as well. I hope they understand why I had to break away, and why I felt I needed to chart my own path. I’m sure that my choice to leave home caused them pain, particularly my mother. As a mother myself, I now look at those kinds of choices differently. While I don’t regret the decision to move across the country, I do wish my parents and I had figured out a better way to spend one-on-one time together—time that was meant for just us and that didn’t involve work or anything in the public eye.

So here I stand now in this moment, with my head back and my hair unruly. My laugh is deep, and my heart is expansive, vulnerable, shy, and tender. It feels so young. My life is full of new ventures and adventures, new loved ones and little ones. I feel alive, energized and at peace.

And yet, I know there’s still so much life left in me. There are still so many parts of my story that remain to be written. Really truly.

In fact, just a few weeks before I turned in the final pages of this book, I had a wild vision come to me during one of my morning meditations: a vivid image of me giving birth to a new version of myself. It was a clear vision of a woman asking to be born and waiting to be unveiled. She said to me, “I’m another side of you that’s been waiting for so long to come out. I’m a very feminine artist and I want you to tap into my creativity, my beauty, my tenderness, and my wholeness. The time is now to bring me to life. Here I am.”

The vision made me weep. I wept for how hard I have driven myself. I wept because I could hear this other side of me inside saying, “It’s okay. You’re enough. Allow for this miracle to be born. It’s you too. Give way and get out of the way of what’s coming.”

Shortly after this happened, I shared the experience in an essay in my weekly publication, The Sunday Paper. Thousands of readers wrote me to say they felt their own internal stirrings, but one woman’s words in particular really moved me. “Every detail of this story has profound meaning and clues to your own unveiling and discovery,” she wrote. “What has been stolen from you or obliterated? What is sacred to you that’s returning? Who or what is here trying to get your attention? What or where is home?”

These are profound questions that I believe we can all benefit from asking ourselves. I’ve been asking them of myself every day since.

Each and every one of us has a different version of ourselves deep within us that’s ready to be born. For years, I didn’t think this creative, artistic side of me could survive in this world, so I buried her deep within for the longest time. Now I’ve finally found the courage to let her come alive.

None of us knows what a new chapter in our lives will bring, but we can sense when an old one is over. I stand in such a moment now. I no longer feel contained. I feel wild and free. I feel in communion with myself, with my God, and with others. I feel like I’m home.

My Name

Which one are you
What’s your name little girl
The sound of those questions recede as I grow not to care
The sun knows my name
The wind knows my name
The trees know who I am
The horse that loved me never asked which one I was
She didn’t care
She knew love didn’t come in a name or a bottle
Today the wind blows through my mane just like it did hers
The ocean envelops my body
The grass bends under my feet
Who embraces your being
Who gravitates to your energy
Who is blinded by your light
It’s not about I am
Or which one are you
When you discard the letters of your name
Do you know who you are?

An SP+ Exclusive Poem & Extended Audio Excerpt

I See You Now

You loved grass and trees
Bushes and bees
Your eyes twinkled with delight at the mere sight
Not just of her but it seemed
Anyone who reached out to talk to you
Dapper delight jacket in place shoes shined bright
Up you got when she walked by
You always said you were the luckiest guy
The luckiest guy
Yes that’s what you said
In work and in play
That was your way
You never complained
You prayed you drank you read you put gas in the tank
You had your way
Your way of walking in the world
Your way of holding your ground
Your way of loving her
Your way of standing down

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 different plans
You had your own way

I wish you told me your thinking
I wish I’d known your plan
I see now your strength was there
It just was hidden from my eyes
I see you now but I didn’t way back when
When the birds swirled the horses ran the dogs barked I ran
I ran away from
The man you were
Now I see what I couldn’t have then
A quiet strength a deep resolve a love that conquered all

From I AM MARIA by Maria Shriver, to be published on April 1, 2025 by The Open Field, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright (C) 2025 by Maria Shriver.

Audio excerpted courtesy of Penguin Random House Audio from I AM MARIA by Maria Shriver, read by Maria Shriver. ©2025 Maria Shriver, ℗ 2025 Penguin Random House, LLC. All rights reserved.