Back in May 2022, Valerie Bertinelli filed for divorce from Tom Vitale. Later that year, she would celebrate it as the “second best day of my life.” The extent to which this has been a relief for Bertinelli is coming to life for both her fans and her as the actress-turned-chef spent January without alcohol, a pleasant change for her physical health but one that saw her confront a lot of emotional damage along the way.
It’s called a “dry January,” and by not drinking, Bertinelli says she sleeps better but also “noticed that – oh boy – lots of feelings are coming up.” She reveals that she has been called “fat and lazy” but also had time to understand those words were fired at her not by any fault of her own but from the person trying to put her down. On social media, Bertinelli is retelling her healing journey in light of the divorce and emotional blows she has suffered.
Valerie Bertinelli explores her healing journey
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Over on Instagram, Bertinelli used a popular audio snippet to react to and tell her story. Text in the video reads, “Why did you let them stay after finding the texts?” Then, Bertinelli mouthed over the sound, “Oh my god. Oh my god. Why did you do that?” Finally, she said, “I don’t know.” This was a reference to the troubles from her past relationship with Vitale. When one follower suggested she “let it go and move on” to not give Vitale more power over her, Bertinelli assured her, “I have moved on Maura, thank you. And I find through journaling, therapy and especially humor that I am healing even faster.”
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Bertinelli says that she is healing from multiple forms of emotional abuse. First, she had to contend with insults, then learn what it meant that she was even being leveled with those abuses. “I have been screamed at so many times and told how fat and lazy I am,” she shared. “I realize…that was someone just projecting on me whatever they needed to project on me, but my part in all of it was believing it, and I don’t believe it anymore.”
For Bertinelli, healing has been a journey from understanding to believing
Bertinelli had first been married to Eddie Van Halen from 1981 to 2007. Together, they had a son, 31-year-old Wolfgang Van Halen. She then stayed with Vitale from 2011 to 2022. She says that in her time with Vitale, she felt lost, a pitfall Bertinelli believes can happen to women who “get so lost in trying to make their partner feel so loved, so respected that they’ve lost any kind of love or respect that they have for themselves.” Anyone who undergoes that, Bertinelli believes, needs to seek healing by finding “themselves again, to just love themselves again, because they don’t even know who they are.”
On her Instagram, Bertinelli has spoken openly about her feelings, about the tools she uses for healing, and about the hurt that’s been leveled at her. She does this “because I know a lot of you out there feel the same way, and you’re told sh—t that’s not true.” Bertinelli assures listeners it’s not them, it’s that “Someone’s trying to dim your light,” and urges them to “Shine bright.”
