Open Field
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Her new memoir, “I am Maria: My Reflections and Poetry for Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Home” (published April 1st by Open Field), Maria Schreiber – Kennedy’s daughter, broadcast journalist, former first lady, uses poetry to explore women looking for herself.
Read the selected poems below. Don’t miss out on an interview with Lee Cowan’s Maria Schreiber on CBS Sunday Morning on March 30th!
Maria Schreiber’s “I’m Maria”
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I know you love me
Beyond the shadow
Beyond words
What goes beyond the photos of loving, nurtured mothers
You should see
Behave like
I’ll talk like this
Touch like
You are
I couldn’t find someone like you in my picture book
My mother didn’t look like you
I wear pants like you
I had hair like you
I played soccer like you
Smoked cigars like you
But I knew you loved me
I knew you wanted more for me than you were given
I knew you wanted for me everything you were rejected
Beyond the shadows, I know you love me
How you smiled at me and cheered me on
How you pushed me
I know you love me
Do you know how much I love you?
Beyond the shadows, you were all me
I understand more and more about you today
You were scared too
You’ve been too long
You were so longing
My heart breaks for you
When I came to learn, we cannot give us what was not given
As you get older, you become softer
You allowed me
My heart breaks for my mother
But no one let her in
But no one could hold her
No one comforted her
No one told her that she was enough
Her journey was merciless
Her energy is not free
I understand now and I’m very sorry
Beyond the shadows, I know you love me
Beyond the shadows I loved you
Dear life
I wanted to talk to you to tell you
You are not what I planned
You may not care, but I thought you should know
You’re not what I expected
As long as the compass was heading north, I thought
Everything will be good
But my mind learned that I don’t know the North
My life led me down an invisible ink-written path
I admire more from a soul I didn’t know yet
So here we are life
No maps, no compass
Only my heart advanced me
I wonder that
Am I ready to be known in new and deep ways?
Am I strong enough to open up and reveal what is lying?
Inside?
The life you say is that you are everything
Let’s see how the universe reacts
Pull back the curtains of the soul
My fragments
They are everywhere
My fragments
Looking down in the ceiling drawer closet
My fragments are all over the land
They’re in Chicago
Maryland
In my school hall
In my bedroom
I broke into two
what about you
Are you crushed?
Are you fragmented?
Almost different
Here your life is on the planet
Heaven or hell
Do you shake?
Between power and impotence
I don’t want anything, I want it all
Are you staring at yourself separated from life?
When you close your eyes, do you pray for the relief of the knife?
please tell me
Are you a co-sick?
Do you know who you are, or have you disappeared from your life
Stand up and stop hiding everywhere
I’m going to pick up the pieces
They are everywhere
It’s a mess It’s a mess
You are here, you are there
I can’t see
Don’t worry about you being anywhere
it’s up to you
Please connect your life together
It’s up to you to make sense
It’s up to you to go back
Return to where it started
I’ll go back to your birth
Please go back if possible
Return to Hyannis
I’ll go back to your room
I’ll go back
Tell him that you know and you no longer feel embarrassed
Tell her you love her and pray for her pain
Pick up the pieces
Make yourself perfect
Return to fragment
They are the key to your soul
Excerpt from Maria Shrier’s “I Am Maria,” published by The Open Field, a trace of Penguin Life, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright©2025 by Maria Shriver. Unauthorized reproduction is prohibited. Some of this excerpts may not be reproduced or reprinted in writing without permission from the publisher.
Get the book here:
Maria Schreiber’s “I’m Maria”
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