Valerie Bertinelli has spoken out about a loss within her family that took place before she was born in her new memoir, Getting Naked: The Quiet Work of Becoming Perfectly Imperfect.
In her second book — which hit shelves Tuesday — the former Food Network host opened up about the death of her brother, Mark, who died when he was 17 months old.
“It wasn’t until I was pregnant with [my son] Wolfie that my mom started to open up about Mark,” she wrote, per Us Weekly. “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.
“‘It was tragic,’” Bertinelli remembered her mother telling her. “‘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.’”
The One Day at a Time star also used her memoir to open up about how she was sexually assaulted when she was 11 years old. Speaking to People ahead of the book’s release, Bertinelli explained that she never intended to go public with her sexual assault.
“I had no plans to reveal this,” she told the publication. “This was going to be a book about teaching people how to love themselves. I did not know that I would go this far.”
She told the publication that she considered sharing the news as another part of the healing journey. “I guess because I'm healing from it, it’s not so scary anymore,” Bertinelli added. “I can say it out loud. I was sexually assaulted. It doesn't feel like it owns me anymore.
“I’m a survivor,” she added.
Bertinelli included a photo of herself at 11 years old in the memoir “because that was the little girl that was sexually abused,” she told People.
“And it boggles my mind that this little girl was taken advantage of that way. 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.’”
