NEED TO KNOW
- Valerie Bertinelli penned a lengthy Instagram post on Thursday, May 22
- She detailed how she deals with bad days and what she has learned from the adverse reaction she gets after talking about them
- The celebrity chef also opened up about how social media has played a role in her change of mindset
Valerie Bertinelli is on a self-love journey, and she’s not afraid to talk about it.
Days after opening up about “going through some of the most emotionally excruciating eight months of [her] life,” the celebrity chef, 65, penned a lengthy Instagram post about how she deals with bad days and what she has learned from the adverse reaction she gets after talking about them.
Bertinelli started her post by talking about how people will assume you “cry too much” if you post about your bad days or think you “live in the past” if you post “too many throwback photos.” She also said she believes people think she’s “narcissistic” because she posts “too many photos” of herself on her Instagram page.
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The food expert recalled being younger and being told by her father that she had to be likable — a “flawed theory,” Bertinelli said she worked through thanks to social media.
“Love you, Pops and I hate to break it to you, but not everybody’s gonna like me. And for the first time in my life, at 65, I’m more than okay with that,” said Bertinelli. “Most importantly, I like me.”
The One Day at a Time alum said she considers herself lucky to have “extraordinary people” in her life who “like me and love me.”
“I’m a good person, I’m kind and caring, I treat others the way I want to be treated. I’m resilient, I’m low maintenance, I feel things deeply, I love hard, I exude equanimity from my soul,” she wrote. “Equanimity is a daily choice I work at, encourage and feed.”
Bertinelli said that it is “someone else’s choice whether they choose to be judgmental or harmful on my page or in my life.”
“The Block button works wonders on social media. It also works in the real world too,” she wrote.
As for the reason for posting the message, Bertinelli said she wanted to encourage others to go through the same life journey.
“It takes hard work, digging down deep and getting help when you need it. An extra sounding board when you need it. Finding new tools for your emotional tool box,” she wrote.
“There’s a reason those shadows are in you. They protected you when you needed to get through scary times in your past. You can put your arms around them and thank them for protecting you and for keeping you strong when you didn’t think you had the strength,” Bertinelli continued.
She ended her post by telling her followers that “you’re not a fraud by being two dialectical things at the same time. You’re a bad ass because of those shadows. The shadows make your kindness shine brighter.”
In her Instagram Stories, Bertinelli reiterated the same sentiments by sharing an Instagram reel by Drew Barrymore in which Barrymore listed “judging others because their life choices are different than yours” as “propaganda I’m not falling for.”
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Bertinelli also shared a quote that read, “It’s not about seeing the good in them anymore, it’s about seeing the truth in their actions.”
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