When Valerie Bertinelli joined The Drew Barrymore Show as a lifestyle expert last year, the supportive atmosphere encouraged her to share.

In a clip posted on the show’s Instagram on Friday, Oct. 10, the celebrity chef opened up about the inspiration for her upcoming memoir, Getting Naked, in a conversation with host Drew Barrymore.

Barrymore praised Bertinelli as “a very open book,” going on to call her “very real, very wise, very giving of your life experiences.”

“I want my life experiences to have meant something,” the Food Network alum explained.

Bertinelli, 65, said she wrote the book over the past year and a half, and started the project 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.’”

The One Day at a Time star noted that trying EMDR (eye movement, desensitization, reprocessing) therapy has been “life saving” for coping with childhood trauma she had put off talking about.

“I talk all about it in the book,” she said, then addressing both Barrymore and co-host Ross Mathews. “And 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 the publisher William Morrow.

The book addresses 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.