Stephen “tWitch” Boss always had a smile on his face. But that high-energy, happy-go-lucky vibe didn’t always come naturally to him.

On the May 29 episode of Taylor Lautner and wife Tay Lautner’s podcast, The Squeeze, Allison Holker Boss opened up about the differences between her husband, who she said she knows as just Stephen, and tWitch, the public-facing dancer and TV personality. Those are “two different humans,” she said.

“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,” Allison, 36, shared. “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 and an entertainer and such, it would drain his energy.”

Stephen would “have to come home” and do a reset of sorts, Allison said – one that he shared only with her and her oldest daughter, Weslie, 16. “Our home was a safe place. So he’d come home and have to really recharge his battery.”

The dancer, who died by suicide in December 2022, “showered people with love,” Allison said, but in the year and a half since his death, she’s started to look at that in a different light.

“I think there was this deeper thing too now that I never saw before,” she said. “Sometimes I wonder if, when he would receive so much love, he almost didn’t think he deserved that love, so he’d give it right back. That’s why he was such a giver.”

Stephen “tWitch” Boss and Allison Holker pose in the IMDb Exclusive Portrait Studio at The Critics Choice Association 5th Annual Celebration of Black Cinema & Television at Fairmont Century Plaza on December 05, 2022.
Michael Rowe/Getty

As she continues working through her grief, Allison — who is also mom to Maddox, 8, and Zaia, 4 — told PEOPLE that being “vulnerable around” her kids has been an important part of her 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

“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,’” she continued. “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.”

She’s also started letting her kids see her cry, which they hadn’t “really seen” before.

“I just realized it was really important to allow them to see those moments. Crying for joy, crying for pain, crying for sadness, all the different types of emotions that come with those things, allowing them to be a part of it with me.”