” I Am Maria” by Maria Shriver

Pour a cup of tea or a glass of wine and settle in with this one!

As you flip through the 330 pages of “I Am Maria” you’ll be introduced to a woman who’s name is synonymous with an American dynasty, and…yourself.

“I Am Maria” pulls back a lace curtain on a woman’s life of familiar expectations, “be a good girl, a good Catholic, a good wife, a good mom”. Not until she moved into a religious cloister feeling like the reincarnation of Julie Andrews in “The Sound of Music” did Maria Shriver recognize she needed to be a good ME. Her crisis was; she didn’t know the real Maria Shriver, she knew her roles, not the woman.

Poetic phrases reveal the greatest challenge to this public persona was to find herself in private spaces. Maria realized for much of her life she followed rules that prevented her from realizing a roadmap of her own design.

As surefooted as her indelible image appears to be on the American landscape Maria felt she walked through her early life wearing shoes she didn’t choose. Surrounded by the enormous privileges of growing-up in a well established home she often felt as fragile as a sandcastle on a Hyannisport beach. The weight of her family’s accomplishments, the burden of not feeling their drive then a devastating marital betrayal left her without a compass. She walked though her days doing what she was expected to do, until she couldn’t fake-it or take-it one more minute.

Unsatisfied by the traditional modes of self-help; counseling sessions with priests, psycho-therapists and psychics Maria shed the syntax of ‘should-be’s‘ and unexpectedly opened the portal of poetry. Uninhibited by the expectation of keeping-up appearances, she explored the woman she ‘could-be’.

Dialectically different from Kennedy, Shriver and Schwarzenegger mantras Maria gives herself permission in this book to be soft, tough, confused and confident. “I Am Maria”  is laced with anxieties, bravados and tears. Because the writing includes so many common vulnerabilities it’s psychologically relatable and ohhhh so amusing.

This book leaves fairytale castles in the past. It hints at, rather than promises, brighter days ahead while leaving room for Maria and readers to walk though unopened doors of agency with a newfound sense of conviction.

For Maria material assets are immaterial, continuing to find herself is the accomplishment of her lifetime.

I Finally See You;

I finally see you

Not him

Not her

Not them

The mirror once so crowded is finally clear

I see you

You did everything for them to see you

For them to take note of who you were

Never stopping to see who you are

Now it no longer matters

It no longer matters whether they see you

Wipe away the fog on the mirror

You are free

On this day look at what you see

On this morning

Know that you are seen

By the only one worth seeing you

Good morning Maria.

( page 302 ; “I Am Maria” )