‘It Would Drain His Energy’

In a new interview on Taylor and Tay Lautner’s podcast, The Squeeze, Holker touched on Boss’ public and private personas — there was Stephen Boss, the man she knew as her husband and the father of her two children, and there was “tWitch,” the “entertainer” the public grew to love.

While many saw the dance pro and DJ as an extrovert, Holker said Boss wasn’t really that way, despite the high-energy personality he displayed on The Ellen DeGeneres Show and in his countless dance videos.

In fact, that personality didn’t come naturally to him, Holker said, leading to mental health struggles that would ultimately see Boss take his own life in December 2022. He was 40.

“So, Stephen. It’s interesting. I knew him as Stephen. A lot of people knew him as ‘tWitch.’ Very two different humans,” Holker said when asked if “tWitch’s mental health struggles were always part of his life or a more recent challenge.

“He wore this character of ‘tWitch,’ and it did become a part of who he was but that extroverted personality was not natural for him,” she explained. “So, when he would go out as ‘tWitch’ and make sure he’s spreading all this love and joy and positivity and be dancing all the time for people — an entertainer, and such — it would drain his energy.”

She continued, “And he would have to come home and he would always tell me … our home was his safe place. So, he’d come home and have to really recharge his battery.”

That recharge, for Boss, meant digging himself out of a dark hole just to be able to come back out and be that light for so many once more.

“When you’re saying recharge your battery that also comes with the state of depression because you get really low. And you had to let him have that space to really kind of find himself in a darker space, let him live in that,” Holker shared.

“He would always find his way out, though,” she continued. “So, a lot of the things that Stephen and I would talk about would be these tools in which he was really trying to help himself, like, ‘I’m reading these self-help books. I’m listening to podcasts. I’m talking to friends. I’m trying to connect with people.'”

“And so I always thought that though you’re dealing with this low side of you that you don’t let other people see, it seemed like he was really treating it,” she added.

Holker, who call her late husband “such a giver,” said Boss addressed his mental health with her often and was honest with himself about where he was at.

“Like, ‘I need to take a second for myself. I need a little bit of space. I need this,'” Holker recalled him saying. “But at the end of the day, I think there was maybe extra help he needed that I was unaware of at the time — talking to a therapist, maybe some medication as well. But I was unaware. ‘Cause I think he also thought he was taking care of it because he’d be like, ‘I’m low. Give me some time to build it back up.'”

Holker is still grappling with the grief she feels today, and credits the pair’s three children — Weslie, 16, Maddox, 8, and Zaia, 4 — for allowing her to be vulnerable as she continues on this path of healing.

“I want my kids to feel so safe and comfortable with me that no matter what they’re feeling, no matter how scary it is, how big of a topic it is, how little of a topic it is, nothing is off the table, and I just want them feeling like they can get it off of their chest,” she said

Holker continued, “I’m still on this journey with them. Because I think as a parent, we always want to know or look like we have the answers. And at this point in my life now, I’m sometimes like, ‘I don’t know, but I’ll certainly try to figure it out with you.”

“We’re all in this together, and it doesn’t matter how old you are, how young you are, we’re all in these journeys of life, we’re all students of life, and we just got to work together, communicate and support one another through it.”