Jordyn Woods‘ NBA baller boyfriend Karl-Anthony Towns has suffered many tragic family losses due to COVID-19, including his mother, and although he admits he’s forever changed, he’s grateful for having Woods by his side to help him heal.

The Minnesota Timberwolves player joined Taraji P. Henson during the Oct. 18 episode of her Facebook Watch series “Peace of Mind with Taraji” and opened up about losing eight family members to the virus and battling it himself after contracting it during basketball season, which resulted in a brief hospital stay.

Karl-Anthony Towns credits girlfriend Jordyn Woods with helping him heal from losing his mom and many other family members to COVID-19. (Photo: @jordynwoods/Instagram)

“It was difficult because as her son and someone who loves her so dearly, I just didn’t want to see her in pain so I was trying to do everything possible to make her comfortable, and get her better quicker,” he said of watching his mother Jacqueline Cruz-Towns struggle from COVID before passing away on April 13, 2020. “I was doing everything in my power. COVID causes a lot of swelling, and the swelling is what got my mom.” Towns said that his father was diagnosed at the same time as his mother and also ended up in the hospital, but he recovered and is doing fine.

“That day changed me as a man,” he said of losing his mother. “I’m never going to get that innocent boy back. … Ever since that day I feel like the world made me a little bit colder.”

The NBA center praised his girlfriend Woods for helping him warm back up, however, and being the rock he’s needed throughout the emotional time. “A woman that meant so much to me in my life left my life to be replaced by another woman to take that spot,” he told Henson with a smile, confirming he was referring to Woods when she asked. “We were best friends … When my mom passed she was like, ‘I’m not going to leave you alone. I’m going to make sure you know who you’re supposed to be with.’

Karl-Anthony Towns and his mother Jacqueline Cruz. “Peace of Mind with Taraji” Facebook Watch video screenshot

Towns explained that he felt Jordan truly understood his pain in losing a parent because her father, John Woods, died in 2017, which has kept him from feeling alone in his grief. “I leaned on her because she’s one of the only people who would actually know how I was feeling and what I was going through because she was super close with her father just like I was super close with my mother,” he said.

The best-friends-turned-baes began dating during the pandemic because, according to Towns, the “challenges” around them drew them closer together. “It just so happened, the COVID came and kind of brought its challenges, and it kind of forced us to either pick where our relationship was going to go as friends or something more. And we chose the latter.”