Maria Shriver On Coping With Grief Post Arnold Schwarzenegger Split

Maria Shriver says she was “consumed with grief” over the end of her relationship with Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The journalist is sharing about the breakdown of her 25-year marriage in her new book, “I Am Maria,” out next month.

“It broke my heart, it broke my spirit, it broke what was left of me,” Shriver wrote of the split in an excerpt published by People magazine on Monday.

“I was consumed with grief and wracked with confusion, anger, fear, sadness, and anxiety,” she wrote. “I was unsure now of who I was, where I belonged. Honestly, it was brutal, and I was terrified.”

While the “devastating, life-altering blow” changed her life forever, Shriver doesn’t dwell on ― or even write about ― Schwarzenegger’s admission that he had fathered a child with the couple’s longtime housekeeper, Mildred Baena.

Schwarzenegger and Baena’s son, Joseph Baena, was born in 1997. The former governor publicly acknowledged Joseph as his child in 2011, the same year Shriver filed for divorce.

“Now, much has been written about the end of my marriage, and frankly I don’t feel like I need or want to discuss it here, or anywhere,” Shriver writes.

“That said, I do want to take a moment to acknowledge the grace, valor, and courage my children exhibited,” she added. “Everything about their world and the sanctity of their home got uprooted in an instant.”

Shriver and Schwarzenegger have four children together: Katherine, 35; Christina, 33; Patrick, 31; and Christopher, 27.

Schwarzenegger’s son Joseph is also 27.

The “Terminator” star has spoken about the moment he confessed his affair ― and secret child ― in a session with his and Shriver’s therapist.

“Maria and I went to counseling once a week,” Schwarzenegger said in his Netflix docuseries, “Arnold.”

“And in one of the sessions the counselor said, ‘I think today Maria wants to be very specific about something. She wants to know if you are the father of Joseph.’ And I was like — I thought my heart stopped, and then I told the truth.”

“Yes, Maria, Joseph is my son,” he recalled telling her. “She was crushed because of that. I had an affair in ’96. In the beginning, I really didn’t know. I just started feeling the older he got, the more it became clear to me. And then it was really just a matter of how do you keep this quiet? How do you keep this a secret?”