However, it did take time for Maria to develop this cordial relationship with Arnold, who she broke up with in 2011 after discovering he had fathered a son named Joseph Baena, now 28, with family housekeeper Mildred Baena.
“My 25-year-long marriage blew up,” she wrote her memoir I Am Maria. “It broke my heart, it broke my spirit, it broke what was left of me.”
Recounting how she was “consumed with grief and wracked with confusion, anger, fear, sadness and anxiety” amid the paternity scandal, the journalist continued, “I was unsure now of who I was, where I belonged. Honestly, it was brutal, and I was terrified.”
That said, her healing journey was almost as long as her divorce, which was finalized in 2021.
“I won’t bore and exhaust you with the details of my self-pity party,” Maria wrote in her book. “I’m also going to spare you a litany of all my trips to various therapists, healers, shamans, and psychics. I even went across the country to a cloistered convent.”
