VALERIE BERTINELLI, 64, CELEBRATES BEING SIX MONTHS ALCOHOL FREE WITH HER SOBER BOYFRIEND MIKE GOODNOUGH
Valerie Bertinelli just celebrated being six months alcohol free with her equally sober boyfriend, Hoarse Whisperings blogger Mike Goodnough.
The 64-year-old former Food Network star - who boasts 4.1M social media followers - publicly announced her milestone on Monday after wiping her entire Instagram account.
Valerie's 53-year-old silver fox commented on her post: 'Funny how we both just randomly decided to stop drinking only weeks before we met each other.'
LA-based Bertinelli originally met Mike via Instagram before chatting on the phone and eventually meeting in person for the first time in his home state of New York.
'He's just very special. He treats me with so much respect and so much kindness and so much patience and I really want to show him that back, but you know it's really hard. He's amazing. He's a good man. He's an incredibly talented writer. I like soak up his words he's so talented. He's a god to me. I think I said too much!' the Indulge cookbook author gushed on the May 13th episode of The Jennifer Hudson Show.
'You know when you're happy and you just want to, like, share it with everybody? Yeah that's me now. I'm not going to jump on any chairs or sofas or anything [like Tom Cruise did in 2005]. It's totally surprising and not what I expected.
'I said this a million times while I was going through my healing for the last two years that I am more than happy I will be blessed to live my life with my cats and my dog. I'm very good alone. I like being alone. I'm really starting to like me, which has been a long process. Most of the time I like me, so I don't need that in my life. But when it comes along you just kind of go, "Okay I guess I'm doing this!"'
Valerie's mention of 'last two years of healing' was a direct reference to her 2022 divorce from ex-husband #2 Tom Vitale, whom she paid a $2.2M divorce settlement to after acrimoniously ending their decade-long marriage.
Bertinelli also suffered the loss of her amicable ex-husband of 20 years - legendary guitarist Eddie Van Halen - in 2020 with whom she shared 33-year-old son Wolfgang Van Halen.
The two-time Daytime Emmy winner also received congratulatory comments on her sobriety post from former talk show host Rosie O'Donnell, The Matrix alum Joe Pantoliano, Desperately Seeking Susan alum Rosanna Arquette, and The Color Purple alum Rae Dawn Chung.
On Tuesday, Valerie pondered the idea of 'eating or drinking to numb/avoid the pain' in order to avoid 'developing the tools to make us feel safe in an unsafe world.'
'Maybe if you take away those numbing tools then you start avoiding feelings altogether because they're just too painful. You disengage, isolate,' Bertinelli wrote.
'When we don't allow ourselves to feel the pain, we can't allow ourselves to get to the other side to where we can feel the joy. It's just too damn scary to feel the pain. And what if that joy isn't on the other side? How am I supposed to trust that?!
'I believe there is always joy and relief on the other side. At some point, we just have to slay that dragon and trust that joy will meet us there because the way we've been going about it just isn't working anymore.'
The One Day at a Time alum - whose sitcom pilot Hungry was not picked up by NBC - will next have a voiceover role in Disney Junior's 2025 animated series Robogobo alongside Cynthia Erivo, Alan Cumming, Ana Gasteyer, and Alison Pill.
Valerie hasn't had an acting gig since concluding her role as divorced writer Melanie Moretti in Suzanne Martin's sitcom Hot in Cleveland, which aired for six seasons on TV Land spanning 2010-2015.
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