Allison Holker isn’t just sharing her late husband Stephen “tWitch” Boss‘ deepest secrets in her new memoir, she’s also opening up about a very “traumatizing” experience she went through as a teenager.
While promoting her upcoming book, This Far: My Story of Love, Loss, and Embracing the Light, the So You Think You Can Dance star appeared on Monday’s episode of The Jamie Kern Lima Show. At one point, the host said:
“I wanted to ask you, in your book, you talk about at the age of 17, you experienced something you say was so traumatizing, that it touched every part of your life.”
Related: Stephen ‘tWitch’ Boss Was Molested As A Child
The professional dancer didn’t share all the details, but she candidly explained:
“I had experienced my first time really feeling like I’d been taken advantage of from the other gender. Someone taking advantage of my vulnerability and my joy of life and my energy of wanting to constantly learn.”
Terribly, she went on to say it was one of her dance teachers who crossed this line, she shared:
“I had some, you know, older man really take advantage of the vulnerability that women go through, especially in the dance community. Where we look up to our teachers and we just trust them — and dance can be very physical. It can be very sexual, even at a young age. And that was taken advantage of.”
Oh, no…
Looking back, she wishes she had “spoke[n] out” for herself and the “other young girls” who were in a similar situation, and this silence has caused her to feel “shame” for many years. She elaborated:
“It tore me apart for a lot of years because I felt like it was my fault. I felt like it was my fault because ‘How could it have gotten to that place? I must have done something wrong.’ And I felt so much shame in who I was, and I was so embarrassed.”
Oof. She’s certainly not alone in feeling that way. Thankfully, the former DWTS pro knows it wasn’t her fault anymore, the 36-year-old continued:
“To this day, it’s one of those things — man, if I would have just spoke out for myself, maybe I could’ve built myself back up and helped other young girls to not let that happen, but I felt a lot of shame in myself, and it was really hard for me to work through that for so many years.”
After she “blamed [her]self for years,” she feels “proud” she has realized this wasn’t her fault, noting that she doesn’t understand “why people do things like that.”
As a mother of three, she has used this harrowing story to help raise her children. She told her eldest child Weslie, 16, this story once to encourage her to always speak up. Allison recalled the “powerful” moment:
“When I had my daughter, I realized that I need to build her up to, like, if anything ever happened to her, come to someone — come to me, come to someone you feel safe with and say, ‘This was wrong.'”
That said, she still “questioned” whether or not to include the incident in her controversial memoir because “it’s a lot emotionally to put something like that out there.” Ultimately, she felt like it was really important to her own story, she shared:
“But then I realized that was kind of the beginning of me becoming so independent and strong and realizing that I won’t ever let someone take anything else from me ever again.”
We’re sure, unfortunately, that there are many people who can relate to something like this. See more from this candid chat (below):
Thoughts? Let us know (below).
[Image via The Jamie Kern Lima Show/ABC/YouTube]
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