Allison Holker shares devastating secret she learned after Stephen ’tWitch’ Boss’s death

In a new interview with People more than two years after Stephen ’tWitch’ Boss’s death, professional dancer Allison Holker is sharing new information about her late husband.

Holker and Boss were together for 12 years, married for nine, before his unexpected and tragic death in December 2022.

Now, Holker is opening up about the dark secrets she learned her late husband was keeping following his death.

“I was with one of my really dear friends, and we were cleaning out the closet and picking out an outfit for him for the funeral,” Holker told People when she discovered a “cornucopia” of drugs in a shoe box.

Holker said she found mushrooms, pills, and “other substances I had to look up on my phone.”

The mom of three called the discovery “really triggering.”

“There were a lot of things I discovered in our closet that I did not know existed. It was very alarming to me to learn that there was so much happening that I had no clue,” she explained to People.

“It was a really scary moment in my life to figure that out, but it also helped me process that he was going through so much and he was hiding so much, and there must have been a lot of shame in that.”

Holker said she thought she and Boss had “very honest” communication in their marriage, saying she was aware he would slip into their guesthouse after their kids had gone to bed to smoke marijuana or drink.

“That was his alone time. It was his time to recharge, and that was OK,” Holker said.

But in reading through his journals after he killed himself, she learned there was so much more Boss was dealing with than she knew about.

“He was wrestling with a lot inside himself, and he was trying to self-medicate and cope with all those feelings because he didn’t want to put it on anyone because he loved everyone so much. He didn’t want other people to take on his pain.”

And although she felt deceived by the secrets Boss had kept from her, Holker said what he wrote about in his journals helped her get “a better perspective of where he was in life and the type of things he was struggling with.”

“It did have me feel a lot of empathy towards him and sadness for all the pain that he was holding.”

Now, Holker says she wants to share Boss’s challenges with the world in hopes of encouraging others not to suffer in silence.

“It was really hard to put all the pieces together. Through certain discussions, even with friends and things that have been said, reading through his journals ... you realize he went through a lot as a child and never faced it,” she says.

“It’s hard to think that he never opened up to someone and wanted to face it, to get through on the other side. I really hope people dealing with the same thing will help themselves out of the shadows and [know] you’re going to be OK.”