LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – JUNE 07: Valerie Bertinelli attends the 51st annual Daytime Emmys Awards at The Westin Bonaventure Hotel & Suites, Los Angeles on June 07, 2024 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Rodin Eckenroth/Getty Images)
Valerie Bertinelli is for the first time publicly discussing the childhood sexual abuse she survived.
The “Valerie’s Home Cooking” host, 65, told People that she is “pissed off” about having been a “little girl that was sexually abused” at age 11.
“It boggles my mind that this little girl was taken advantage of that way,” said Bertinelli. “It boggles my mind because it’s still happening … and I’m furious about it. And we need to start speaking up and saying, ‘Enough.’”
The “One Day at a Time” alum revealed “it’s taken … 10 years at least” to speak publicly about the abuse, which she’s also recognized as the basis of her body shame.
“The very first time I said it out loud to my therapist, I thought ‘I’m going to feel better now.’ It got worse before it got better. I maybe ate a little bit more, drank a little bit more,” said Bertinelli. “When you stop eating things for comfort, stop drinking alcohol, it exposes your feelings. … I chose to deal with them. I don’t feel shame about it anymore. I’m pissed off that it happened. Nobody deserves that.”
Now that she’s “healing from it” though, Bertinelli feels the reality of what she endured is “not so scary anymore. … I’m a survivor.”
Bertinelli told People she “did not know that I would go this far” in discussing the abuse in her upcoming memoir, “Getting Naked: The Quiet Work of Becoming Perfectly Imperfect,” out March 10. The book, she said, was intended “to be … about teaching people how to love themselves.”
Originally published at Jami Ganz