Widow slammed for viral 'One guy dying isn't going to ruin the rest of my life' post

After her TikTok video about moving on from her husband's sudden death went viral, Holly Smith is clapping back.

Smith's original video, posted on Sept. 15, responds to a comment questioning her behavior after her husband's death five months ago.

"Your husband just died, why are you acting like everything is fine?" the comment said, which Smith reposted over a video of her baking with her two kids, ages 5 and 2.

"Because he’s not my God, because one guy dying isn’t going to ruin the rest of my life," Smith, 28, says in a voiceover. "One bad thing isn’t going to ruin you either. What has happened that leads you to think that everything is feeling bad and dark and depressy? We got to fix it, you got to root it out. You got to start walking toward something better."

In an interview with TODAY.com, Smith says that her husband died in April 2024 from a sudden heart attack at the age of 31.

"He just went to sleep and never woke up," she says. "And so I had a lot of people in my face right away telling me how bad everything was about to look and feel and get."

Smith, who lives in Morganton, North Carolina, says she and her late husband had owned a successful trucking company together.

"When he passed away, the entire framework for my life was just gone," she says. "...I had everyone telling me how bad everything was, and I had been spending a lot of time in prayer with the Lord and reading the Bible. And the Bible says you get to win in life, so I just stood on that, and it is making people angry."

In the comments of her post, people were surprised that Smith has seemingly been able to move on so quickly.

"My husband died unexpectedly 4 years ago and never would I EVER refer to it as 'just one man dying,'" one person replied. "It’s a whole life we had planned dying. I know that grief looks different for everyone but wow!"

"I tried this approach when my brother died and 6 months later had a full on break down. Please take care of yourself," another posted.

Smith says that while her approach might be hard for other people to understand, she feels "mentally strong."

"I don't even feel defensive," she says of the online comments. "I know that the way I think is different from how other people think."

Smith adds that she has "refused to grieve."

"I have mourned the loss of my husband. I have mourned the loss of my marriage and the nine years that we spent building a life together," she says. "But grief, to me, sounds like pain and suffering."

Smith says her in-laws have been "very understanding of the fact that, 'Hey, we got kids to raise. We got a life to lead, we got to keep moving.'"

Her late husband's father also died from a sudden heart attack at a young age — a fact Smith says "haunted" her partner his whole life. She says she tries to celebrate her husband's good qualities with their children instead of always talking about losing him.

"I focus on the things that dad was really awesome at," she says. "And I talk about all his good qualities and how my kids can also use those in their life."

Smith says that while the comments on her page have been brutal to read, she finds much of her strength in her faith.

"There’s no way that I would be this happy and be able to be this OK in my life if there wasn’t a real God in heaven," she says, adding that she believes many of the commenters are in a darker, worse place than she is.

"I hope people realize there's more than one way to deal with the loss of a human being...," she says. "(There are) people who are like, 'I'm more upset about my bird dying than this.' I'm like, Well, don't be upset. Move on. Live your life."

This article was originally published on TODAY.com