Valerie Bertinelli has opened up about how she has been coping after her divorce from financial planner Tom Vitale was finalised in November.
The One Day at a Time star shared her thoughts and feelings in an Instagram video posted on Friday (3 February) and said she underwent an “intensive” physical therapy that works on the body’s connective tissues.
“It’s so painful, but there’s a release that happens that’s really helpful,” she said. “I believe that a lot of emotional pain is stored in the body, and I’m doing my best to heal from it in every way – my therapy, my journalling, my meditation, rolfing.”
Bertinelli, 62, told her followers she finds sharing her experience to be helpful because so many of them “have been through the same bullcrap that I have”.
She also addressed those who tell her to “get over it” and said: “I am over it. I’m over the narcissist. I’m long over the narcissist.”
The Food Network host filed for divorce from Vitale last May after legally separating in November 2021. On the day she became officially divorce from him, Bertinelli posted on Twitter that she was celebrating “the second best day of my life”.
She said that her focus now is on figuring out what made her “tolerate the intolerable” during her marriage to the financial planner.
Reflecting on a message from a follower who asked her the question, she said: “That question just was a lightbulb. What made me tolerate the intolerable? So, by searching for that – by healing that – I have just put a better life forward for myself.
“I’m more joyful. I’m more happy. A life that I already have that I’m grateful for, but a life that I can truly enjoy. Because I finally feel like I deserve it.”
Bertinelli continued that she has “moved on from the s***ty part” and is now “going into the really hard, hard part that has the most benefits to it”.
In a previous video posted to social media, Bertinelli opened up about experiencing abuse, although she did not clarify where it came from.
“I have been screamed at so many times and told how fat and lazy I am,” she said. “I realise… 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.
“But it still doesn’t stop the feelings from coming up and the hurt. So that’s what we’re fdoing today. We’re feeling the feelings and letting them go. Giving them a voice.”
Bertinelli has one son, Wolfgang Van Halen, from her previous marriage to musician Eddie Van Halen, to whom she was married from 1981 to 2007. She was married to Vitale from 2011 to 2022.
