Valerie Bertinelli is opening up about a pivotal loss her family experienced before she was born.
“It wasn’t until I was pregnant with [my son] Wolfie that my mom started to open up about Mark,” Bertinelli wrote in her new book, Getting Naked: The Quiet Work of Becoming Perfectly Imperfect, referring to her brother who died at just 17 months old. “Before then, details about him came out in dribs and drabs. But once I was carrying my own child, she told me about her own pregnancy and what Mark had been like as a baby and a toddler.”
Bertinelli continued, “He was her second boy, a bright light, happy and adventurous. He wandered off one afternoon and drank from a glass Coke bottle sitting on a barn shelf without knowing it was storing poison. A part of my mom died that day, too.”
The Food Network personality learned more about Mark shortly before her mother Nancy’s death in 2019.
Valerie Bertinelli Reflects on Relationship With Late Mom in Emotional Post
“‘It must have been horrifying,’” she remembered telling her mom. “I saw tears in her eyes. She nodded. But she was so uncomfortable broaching this awful time in her life that she didn’t know how to talk about it, even though I could see her wishing she could. It remained unspoken. Like so many things.”
Bertinelli noted that she didn’t “know how my mom continued on after losing my brother” so early in his life. She added that the mother-daughter pair were “finally able to have meaningful conversations” toward the end of Nancy’s life.
“‘It was tragic,’” Nancy told her daughter. “‘But I had a family. I wanted more children. I was already pregnant with you. You find a way forward or … I guess you don’t.’”
Throughout her book, Bertinelli acknowledged that she had a “good life” with a “happy family,” but there was “darkness” beneath the surface. Along with Mark’s death, “there were infidelities” in her parents’ marriage.
“My mother suffered silently, crying on occasion but never to my knowledge fighting back. They soldiered through their issues. We all did,” she recalled.
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Bertinelli battled darkness herself, revealing she was sexually abused at age 11. “It doesn’t matter who, when, or how it all happened. … What does matter is the effect it had on me. The pain. The beliefs I carried about myself after it. That’s what shaped me,” she wrote, comparing the “secret” of her abuse to a “slow-growing cancer.”
“For decades, I told no one. Even in therapy, I stuck to my story. ‘I love my life. Shitty things happened. But I love my life,’” she explained.
When she finally opened up about what she experienced, Bertinelli didn’t feel like a weight was lifted or find any “clarity.” With the help of therapy, however, Bertinelli came to an important realization that changed her perspective.
“The abuse happened — and yet I’m still here. It brought pain, anger, embarrassment, guilt, and shame — and yet I have known connection, joy, and love. I carry scars — and yet I heal again and again,” she wrote. “I used to believe healing meant letting go, purging the pain. Now I know healing is not erasure. It’s a reckoning. … A refusal to let shame hold more weight than love.”
If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).
