Arnold Schwarzenegger's Special Birthday Post to Youngest Son

The hills are live with words of enlightenment, according to Maria Shriver.

The writer reflected connected her high-profile divorce from ex Arnold Schwarzenegger during the Feb. 6 occurrence of the Making Space with Hoda Kotb podcast, sharing that she visited a cloistered convent soon aft the divided "to beryllium successful soundlessness and look for advice."

Describing the acquisition arsenic "a country retired of The Sound of Music," Shriver recalled however the convent's Reverend Mother helped unfastened her eyes and find a caller outlook connected life.

"The Reverend Mother determination said to maine astatine the precise end, she said—and I really person written astir this, but I haven't shared—she said, 'I deliberation you came present looking for permission,'" Shriver shared, earlier referencing Julie Andrews' relation successful the iconic film. "She says, 'You can't travel unrecorded here, but you bash person support to spell retired and go Maria.' I was like, sobbing."

The 67-year-old went connected to explicate however she realized her afloat imaginable aft that profound conversation. "I had ne'er fixed myself support to feel, to beryllium vulnerable, to beryllium weak, to beryllium brought to my knees, and the satellite did it to me," Shriver told big Hoda Kotb. "And past I was like, 'Okay, God, let's go. I'm gonna instrumentality this and larn everything I tin astir my relation and what I request to learn.'"

The erstwhile couple, who finalized their divorcement successful 2021, have maintained a cordial relationship since their breakup. Most recently, they reunited to celebrate their lad Patrick's birthday in September.

Looking back, Shriver—who is relative to Caroline Kennedy, the girl of precocious President John F. Kennedy and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis—said she often felt "invisible" surviving successful the shadiness of idiosyncratic else.

"I would find myself getting aggravated astatine radical who came up and didn't admit that I existed erstwhile I was lasting adjacent to Arnold, oregon erstwhile I was lasting adjacent to my uncle oregon somebody," she shared connected the podcast. "And past I [realized] they were teaching maine a acquisition that it's not astir whether they spot me. Do I spot me? Am I disposable to me?"

As she explained, "It's not astir different radical seeing you, it's astir you seeing yourself. And that took maine a truly agelong time, a truly agelong clip to learn."