Oprah Winfrey embraces new weight-loss drug, talks misconceptions
Oprah Winfrey openly discussed why she decided to start using medication to help her lose weight.
unbranded – Entertainment
Maria Shriver has opened up about the role Oprah played in helping her through the devastating end of her 25-year marriage to Arnold Schwarzenegger.
In an hourlong conversation on The Oprah Podcast, which released Tuesday, the journalist and nonprofit founder spoke with Oprah about the real-life events that inspired various poems in her upcoming book, “I Am Maria” (Open Field, out April 1). Among them was her separation from Schwarzenegger in 2011 after it was publicly revealed that he’d fathered a child with their former housekeeper a decade earlier.
“It did take me a really long time (to recover), and you were there on the hotel floor,” Shriver told Oprah of the fallout from Schwarzenegger’s infidelity. “It’s still an emotional thing for me. But I wanted to pick myself up.”
Shriver had reportedly found out about Schwarzenegger’s son in January 2011, and for his part the former “Governator” has been contrite, calling himself a husband who “failed” in a 2015 interview with USA TODAY.
An excerpt from this poem reads: “As I sat on the hotel room floor in the dark, terrified and alone with tears streaming down my face, I thought to myself: Maria, this doesn’t have to be the end of the you. It can’t be the end of you. Make it a new beginning of you.”
The experience inspired Shriver to self-reflect: “I wanted to know how that had happened to me. I wanted to know who I could be moving forward.” She also was driven to “show my daughters and my boys that I could hold myself up, that I could put my shoulders back, that I could heal.”
However, she told Oprah, she didn’t have the resources for inner healing. Shriver said, “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.”
‘Arnold and I have a great relationship now’
Oprah gave her longtime friend credit for putting aside her own issues to celebrate one of Oprah’s career milestones. She noted that Shriver, along with best friend Gayle King, joined her on stage for the “farewell spectacular” that commemorated “The Oprah Winfrey Show” coming to an end in May 2011.
“You came and you showed up for me. And I don’t know how you did that because you weren’t even in your right mind. Were you even present in your body?” Oprah asked Shriver.
Shriver replied, “I wanted to be there for you because you’ve been there for me, and you are one of my best friends in the world.”
The author also delved into why prioritizing a civil relationship with Schwarzenegger, with whom she shares four adult children, made the most sense for her. “I really wanted to move forward, and I wanted to have a good relationship with Arnold. I wanted my children to see me moving forward,” she told Oprah.
“I had been with Arnold since I was 21. He’s the father of my children. I wanted to be able to go to my kids’ weddings, (be there) when they have kids,” Shriver added. “I wanted to be the person that could be in the room and everybody would be OK.”
Shriver also revealed that her ex-husband admitted there was nothing she could have done “better” in their relationship. Nonetheless, she said, “It took a really long time to forgive myself, to forgive the whole situation.”
She added, “I think Arnold and I have a great relationship now, and I think there will always be a love there.”
Maria Shriver wanted nothing to do with politics when Arnold Schwarzenegger ran for governor
While speaking with Oprah, Shriver — the daughter of Democratic vice presidential candidate Robert Sargent Shriver Jr. and Special Olympics founder Eunice Kennedy Shriver — also revealed how her famous family impacted her decision to marry Schwarzenegger.
“Arnold, represented, for me, somebody who lived on the West Coast, who had a freedom that I’d never seen before,” she said.
Oprah recalled that Shriver was “sharply opposed” to her then-husband running for office. Shriver confessed Schwarzenegger’s desire to run for California governor was “a triggering decision for me”
“I thought, he’s going to be shot, or he’s going to lose, because those were my two experiences,” she said, referring to her uncles John and Robert F. Kennedy being assassinated and her father and uncle Ted Kennedy’s unsuccessful White House bids. “So my experience with politics was so traumatic that that erupted in me.”
Shriver added: “I was like, I didn’t want anything to do with this business. And so I felt that Arnold was the furthest thing I could find from politics.”
Regardless, after her ex husband’s nearly two terms in office, she sees being California’s first lady as “an incredible gift.”
Leave a Reply