Valerie Bertinelli ‘Felt Guilty’ About Things She ‘Experimented With’ in the ’80s, Learned to ‘Forgive’

Valerie Bertinelli reflected on her past, or rather, how much of it she “remembers.” The Food Network alum confessed that some things she experienced from the 1980s are a bit hazy for her during the “Memory Bank” segment on The Drew Barrymore Show on Monday, February 3.

The segment kicked off with Valerie, 64, showing pictures of what she looked like when she was younger.

“I think we were married. Yeah, I was married to Ed there,” Valerie said.

In the ‘80s, Valerie was married to rocker Eddie Van Halen. They were married for 26 years before they were officially divorced in 2007. They welcomed one child together during their marriage, son Wolfgang Van Halen. Eddie died in October 2020 due to complications from throat cancer.

“I look at that and I think: ‘That is a puffy face, and someone who needs to start taking care of herself,’” she said while one photo of her younger self was displayed on the screen behind her. “I mean, that was the ‘80s, though. I don’t remember that. I don’t remember anything about the ‘80s.”

“For the longest time, I always felt guilty about the things I experimented with and what I tried when I was a young girl,” Valerie said, to which host Drew Barrymore responded, “That’s such an ABC Afterschool Special term. Were you ever in an ABC Afterschool Special?”

Valerie said that she had never been in an ABC Afterschool Special. But Drew, 49, said that she had. “I was, of course. Oh yeah. 15 and Getting Straight,” the 50 First Dates actress said, adding, “I was an Afterschool Special! By the way I was the ‘Just Say No’ girl with Nancy Reagan. Until I just said yes.”

Despite some of the lows she experienced in the past, Valerie said that she has forgiven herself for her misfortunes, and encouraged Drew to do the same.

“Listen, I forgive us [for] all of that,” she said. “We coped the way we knew how to cope with a really challenging, strange life. And also, we have to start giving ourselves grace for just trying to learn through stuff.”

The One Day at a Time actress opened up about the trials and tribulations of her past after the premiere of her son’s episode of Behind the Music on Paramount+ in May 2024.

“I was finally able to watch Wolfie’s Behind the Music. It was not easy,” she said in a video. “I’d stopped it many times because it was just too brutal to watch for many reasons. One, seeing Wolfie’s pain. Two, seeing what a better job I could have done as a parent even though he turned out magnificently. I made a lot of mistakes.”

“And three, seeing what I had turned of Ed’s and my relationship — into some sort of fantasy, soulmate recreation of history,” she added.

Valerie said that their marriage “rapidly declined” after his substance abuse and infidelity, which she said was “nothing that makes you feel loved and wanted and cared for. Nothing that would scream soulmate, that’s for sure.”

“But after Ed died, I was more than willing to put myself in the grieving widow category for a man that I hadn’t lived with for 20 years,” Valerie explained. “What we had together was this beautiful son that we both unconditionally loved.”

“That’s what I got out of that marriage was Wolfie, the best thing that ever happened to me,” she said. “Not a soulmate.”