I Am Maria: My Reflections and Poems on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home

by Maria Shriver

Overview

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

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.

I Am Maria is a powerful collection of Maria Shriver’s own poems that grapple with identity, grief, love, loss, longing, heartbreak and healing.

Her deeply personal poems address life’s transitions, challenges, successes and failures. Vulnerable and deeply moving, Shriver’s words are a collection of her life experiences woven into poetry to inspire everyone on their own journey. It is also an invitation for readers to write their own personal poetry, reclaiming the art as accessible to everyone and a tool to look within.

I Am Maria is a roadmap for anyone trying to shed the labels, layers, and armor that holds us back from creating a wildly authentic and meaningful life.

“I never imagined writing poetry would help me embark
On a journey deep into myself
I never imagined that everything I sought or thought I needed
Was within me all along”
—from I Am Maria

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780593653401
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	04/01/2025
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	eBook
Pages:	352
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Maria Shriver is a mother and grandmother, 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, 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.

Editorial Reviews

She found a way forward after devastating losses: writing poetry. Not literary poetry, but wholly personal poetry expressing and exploring ‘raw, authentic’ emotions.”

Booklist

In this book, she has opened her soul and allowed all of us—anyone who has ever experienced feelings of loss or grief or not being enough—in. Maria’s poems lead us to the open field, a place of self-love, healing, and home.”

Oprah Winfrey

I read this book on a rainy day, sitting in my window seat, and I wept. I wept because I’ve known Maria since we were in our 20s, and in this book she has opened her soul and allowed all of us—anyone who has ever experienced feelings of loss or grief or not being enough—in. Maria’s poems lead us to the open field, a place of self-love, healing, and home. It is an astonishing work and I am so proud of my friend and the woman she has become.”
—Oprah Winfrey

“I love I Am Maria for the same reasons I love Maria Shriver: her courage and honesty, depth, wisdom, and charm. These reminiscences and poems are so fresh and personal, about the joy and heartbreak of one woman's life, the hope she has found in the dark times, and the abiding light of love.”
—Anne Lamott, bestselling author

“With an elegance befitting her stature, Maria ventures courageously beneath the surface of her storied life through poetry, beckoning us to meet the truest version of ourselves within this universal medium of self-discovery—the one that perseveres through life’s challenges so we can reemerge stronger and brighter than before.”
—Rich Roll, bestselling author of Finding Ultra & host of The Rich Roll Podcast

“Maria Shriver is one of my hero's because her energy radiates grace and compassion. Her new book I Am Maria is a must-read for anyone and everyone looking to excavate their inner voice and heal their soul. Her 'reporter' poetry written from the front lines of her life is a source of encouragement and inspiration that will help people transform their lives for the better.”
—Yung Pueblo #1 New York Times bestselling author

"This book is a map of Maria's awakening, offered in the hope that each reader can also learn to look within, tell the bald truth, and dissolve layers of ego until nothing is left but the true, quiet, joyful self. I Am Maria is a gift to all of us, from its author’s heart of hearts."
—Martha Beck, New York Times bestselling author

“I am a better leader, a better friend, a better son, brother and uncle because of Maria Shriver. Most importantly, I am a better version of myself. Maria is able to give advice and offer a perspective in words that I am able to hear. I smiled when I read I Am Maria because the poems are exactly the way Maria talks to me. Reading her book felt like she was sitting right next to me. And now she can sit right next to you too.”
—Simon Sinek, Optimist, NYT bestselling author of Start With Why and host of the podcast, A Bit of Optimism

"As inspirational as it is illuminating the human journey toward wholeness, I Am Maria is a gift for each of us as we search for ways to discover, uncover, and recover the riches within us. Maria Shriver’s life stories, shared here in powerful poems of clarity and courage, reveal an inner dimension of all of our lives as we try to make sense of the past to free us to live fully in the present and create the future lives we long to lead. With empowering messages of forgiveness and transformation, the explorations of this beautiful volume will enrich the lives of so many of us who can learn to dig deep and find that space of love and openness inside—that "open field" Maria writes so powerfully about—to face the world with fresh eyes and a renewed sense of connection and hope. What a wonderful gift for humanity."
—Daniel J. Siegel, M.D., New York Times bestselling author of IntraConnected, Mindsight, and Brainstorm and founder of the Mindsight Institute

"I Am Maria is an inspiring, open-hearted marvel. To be a prominent public figure and to write such personal, powerful poems is an act of courage and love. This is how to heal and claim joy. Shriver is a national treasure and wonderful poet, too."
—Lee Herrick, California Poet Laureate

"Maria Shriver writes with the kind of hard-won clarity that only comes from living it. I Am Maria is part balm, part mirror—offering wisdom for the woman who refuses to disappear."
—Kate Baer, New York Times bestselling poet and author

"After a demanding, award-winning journalism career and tireless work as an activist on many fronts, Shriver has dedicated herself to writing and publishing books that illuminate paths to self-care. Here she shares the key to how she found a way forward after devastating losses: writing poetry. Not literary poetry, but wholly personal poetry expressing and exploring “raw, authentic” emotions... Shriver’s openhearted, easily read poems, with universal feelings at their core, chart her painful yet liberating self-analysis leading to self-love. The goal of her poetry is 'to embrace the whole of life...to grow and evolve.' She encourages everyone to do the same."
—Booklist

From the Publisher

Author, broadcast journalist, and JFK's niece, Maria Shriver also served as California's first lady. Here she offers a heartfelt "sort of memoir,'' which is supplemented by her personal, occasionally cryptic, poetry. Shriver's performance is polished, varied in pace and tone, easy on the ears, and moving. Poems reflect a life of major accomplishments and wealth advantages but riddled by trauma. The overall theme of her life has been the Kennedy/Shriver mantra: "To whom much is given, much is expected." Shriver asks the listener, as well as herself, to make peace with the highs and lows of life, to be just exactly who you are, and to do so using poetry--not necessarily with couplet, rhyme, or haiku--simply words that give emotion to the feelings. W.A.G. © AudioFile 2025, Portland, Maine

APRIL 2025 - AudioFile