After decades in the spotlight, Valerie Bertinelli has learned to shut out the noise.
The "One Day at a Time" star, 66, shared a message in an Oct. 6 video directed at those trying to downplay her grief on the sixth anniversary of her ex-husband Eddie Van Halen's death.
"It does not take long for me to get a lot of pushback when I post a picture of me and Ed. It used to really bother me. It does not, not any longer," she said hours after posting a throwback photo of herself and the late guitarist, to whom she was married for 20 years, from 1981 until their separation in 2001.
Alongside the image of the two of them in a car, she'd written: "Photos may fade, like old photos do, but not the memories and never the love." Though the comments were mostly
positive, one commenter wrote under the photo, "Still playing the widow 🙄."
"They’ll never quite say the words 'You're not allowed to love your ex-husband,'" Bertinelli said in the video. "But they will berate you and berate you for months, make you think you’re crazy, until you finally say, 'OK, fine, I don’t love him.'"
She added that naysayers also comment on her posts about her son Wolfgang Van Halen, such as when she attends his shows, and confessed, "They will make that night miserable." Critics call her "obsessed" until "you take the picture down," Bertinelli continued.
"I learned a lot, and you can't tell me how I feel. Nobody can tell you how you feel," she said.
She explained that she has plenty of room in her heart, including for her ex-husband, son, daughter-in-law and friends, and added, "If I ever fall in love again, I'll make room in my heart for that new person."
"You can't bother me," Bertinelli concluded. "I love Ed. I'll never stop loving Ed."
Eddie Val Halen 'felt like a big brother' to Valerie Bertinelli by the time he died
The "C.H.O.M.P.S." actress started writing her 2022 book "Enough Already: Learning to Love the Way I Am Today" weeks after the 65-year-old Rock & Roll Hall of Famer died on Oct. 6, 2020, following a "long and arduous battle with cancer," as Wolfgang Van Halen wrote at the time. Though their marriage was impacted by drug use and cheating, she described their love as enduring and called her ex-husband one of her soulmates.
“I fell in love with him when I was 20, and it rapidly declined into drugs and alcohol and infidelity," she wrote. "Nothing that makes you feel loved and wanted and cared for. Nothing that would scream soulmate, that's for sure."
But after their split, "Ed and I grew even closer together," she wrote, adding, "We couldn’t live with each other, but we found it impossible to live completely apart."
She detailed the unique, loving relationship she and Eddie Van Halen had at the time of his death in a 2024 interview with USA TODAY.
"My son was losing his father, I was in a relationship that was terribly wrong for me, and I was holding onto some sort of lifeline because of the years I had with Ed," she said. "I was madly in love with him when I met him, but our love changed. He felt like a big brother to me that I just wanted the best for by the time he got very sick."
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Valerie Bertinelli slams critics on Eddie Van Halen's death anniversary
