‘Enough Already’ Is Valerie Bertinelli’s Most (Unflinchingly) Honest Book Yet
Actor Valerie Bertinelli’s new memoir Enough Already: Learning to Love the Way I Am Today hit bookshelves and e-readers today.
The Food Network host seems to unpack it all. From the loss of her former husband Eddie Van Halen to cancer, the grief that she and son Wolfgang faced together, her second career as a culinary personality on Food Network, and the body image issues she says have plagued her most of her life, this is easily Valerie Bertinelli’s most honest book yet.
Valerie Bertinelli’s ‘Enough Already’ just published
In her new memoir, Bertinelli opens up in each chapter on a memory or event in her life. She reveals her feelings of insecurity working alongside her Hot in Cleveland co-stars and her newfound career, albeit initially plagued with imposter syndrome, with Food Network.
Bertinelli also shared that she remained alongside Van Halen throughout his battle with cancer (some of her last words to him are “Maybe next time we’ll get it right”) and the tremendous loss she and Wolfgang navigated together after his death.
Dotted throughout the book are meaningful recipes such as the Hot Spinach and Crab Dip Van Halen gobbled up while visiting Bertinelli and their son in 2019. She also includes a recipe for Bami Goreng, the Indonesian dish her former mother-in-law taught her to make; as well as her mother’s unforgettable lasagna.
Her previous memoirs ‘reflected the mindset of someone who always felt broken,’ Bertinelli writes
The television personality has written two other memoirs: 2008’s Losing It – and Gaining My Life Back, One Pound at a Time, and its follow-up in 2009, Finding It: And Satisfying My Hunger for Life Without Opening the Fridge. Both books dealt with the actor’s lifelong issues with self-image and weight. In her 40s when she wrote those books, Bertinelli’s latest memoir finds her at age 61 examining what she now realizes were faulty mindsets and behaviors.
“My previous books,” Bertinelli writes, “reflected the mindset of someone who always felt broken. I looked in the mirror and saw flaws and imperfections. [I] was always trying to fix something about myself. I was always telling myself ‘No’ or ‘Don’t’ or ‘You were bad today’ or ‘You cheated.'”
She asks herself in Enough Already, “Why couldn’t I see the best of me instead?,” explaining that this latest memoir “is about letting go of certain behavior that no longer serves me.”
Bertinelli got honest about her marriage to Tom Vitale
While it was announced recently that the actor has separated from her husband Tom Vitale, the reason for the split hadn’t been made clear until now. The pandemic, according to Bertinelli, forced the couple to honestly look at their relationship and they parted ways.
“We have separated,” she writes. “Fissures in the relationship surfaced years ago, and like what happened to nearly everyone I know, the lockdown led to a serious reassessment of priorities … In my search to experience more joy, I have to identify and move past ideas and behavior that no longer serve me, and my 11-year marriage to Tom is one of those things.”
The decision, she added, was a “slow, painful one” saying Vitale is “a good man who is going through many of the same issues that I have faced … The paths we thought we were on changed.”
Bertinelli regrets ‘creating roadblocks’ with her ex-husband
She writes that Van Halen offered numerous opportunities for the pair to “hang out” and watch football together, but she kept “creating roadblocks, worrying about giving the wrong impression, then beating myself up afterward for overthinking things and ultimately wasting precious time we could spend together. Story of my life.”
Bertinelli offered a thought on time as only a Food Network host could: “Time is something we have no business treating as if it were available in an unlimited supply and will always be there, like a half-used jar of pickle relish on a refrigerator shelf.”
While the actor’s focus throughout Enough Already is on finding joy and happiness, there is a strong undercurrent of regret and pain over what could have been. More than once, she expresses, “I don’t want to waste time anymore.” Valerie Bertinelli seems to be a woman with a mission: to make the absolute most of the rest of her life.
