"To be able to walk on these streets and not feel what I felt then, I guess I'm getting better," she said
Valerie Bertinelli had a moment of reflection while walking through New York City.
On Wednesday, Oct. 22, the celebrity chef shared a video on her Instagram Stories in which she shared, "Sometimes I forget how far I've actually been able to come in the last year and a half."
The Food Network alum explained that she was near Saks Fifth Avenue when the area brought back memories.
"On these streets, I had some pretty horrible experiences, some mental, emotional beatdowns like I've never experienced before," Bertinelli, 65, recalled. "And it's really a tribute to our brains and our hearts and our human bodies because it does, our bodies do hold trauma."
"But to be able to walk on these streets and not feel what I felt then, I guess I'm getting better," she went on.
Bertinelli added that EMDR (eye movement, desensitization, reprocessing) and talk therapy "has really helped."
"And where I work really helps," she noted. "I'm surrounded by kind people. I just want you to know that it gets better. It does."
She also shared an image of a butterfly with the message, "You've made it through every hard day so far ... that's proof of your strength."
Barrymore referred to Bertinelli as "a very open book," also calling her "very real, very wise, very giving of your life experiences."
"I want my life experiences to have meant something," Bertinelli replied.
Bertinelli said she started writing her book around the same time she began appearing on Barrymore's show in 2024.
"You welcomed me into this home and it felt like such a safe space," the Indulge cookbook author said. "And I started to then just write, and write and write. And I went, 'Oh, I'm not healed yet. I've got so much more left to do.'"
Bertinelli then addressed both Barrymore and co-host Ross Mathews, telling them: "It has changed my life being here in this really safe space. You are both such blessings to people."
"I feel so loved here," she added. "And this book is hopefully what I've been through, what I can learn from it, and then what I can then give anybody else that may want to learn and make their lives better as well."
Getting Naked explores what it's like to "grow older, love harder and start over," according to the publisher William Morrow.
The book will delve into Bertinelli's "insecurities that have haunted her for decades," including body image issues and a persistent need to be perfect.
"I'm excited if not a little nervous because this book is almost uncomfortably personal," Bertinelli told PEOPLE. "I'm hoping it reaches the right people so that they can see themselves in it and know that there's a way through all the challenges we have in our life."
Getting Naked will hit shelves on March 10, 2026 and is available for preorder now, wherever books are sold.