NEW UPDATE: Savannah Chrisley Opens Up About the ‘Hardest Part of Loving’ While Grieving [TN]

Savannah Chrisley’s heart is torn.

The Chrisley Knows Best alum opened up about the bittersweet emotions that come with falling for her new boyfriend Robert Shiver while also continuing to grieve the death of her ex-fiancé Nic Kerdiles. “I’m just afraid of allowing any love into my life in fear of losing it,” she said on her Unlocked with Savannah Chrisley podcast.

Chrisley, 26, then cited the ongoing grief surrounding both Kerdiles’ death and her parents Todd and Julie Chrisley’s years-long prison sentences, saying, “That’s the toughest thing in the entire world is to, for me, to let my guard down and allow love into my life, and then it get ripped away.”

“I think you get so used to doing life solo that it’s like … all right, I don’t need anything because if you’re gonna come in and disrupt it, then there we are, and now I have to start over and I have to heal again,“ she continued. “I’ve spent a lot of my life healing.”

There is another way Chrisley looks at love, though. “I get to the other side of it and I’m like, you know what? Grief also teaches you that life is short — that you lose people. You don’t know when the last moment you’re gonna have with someone is.”

Explaining that “it’s confusing” grappling with grief, Chrisley concluded that there’s no use in holding back words, actions and experiences, knowing that any time you see someone could be the last.

Chrisley also noted at the episode’s beginning that she was “ready for the year to be over” despite having filmed the segment on Jan. 9. Her reasoning was linked to the odd reminders of Kerdiles that were all around her that week.

The first instance was that it would have been her sixth anniversary with Kerdiles, had they not ended their relationship.

“I think that put me in a funk for the week,” she said. “Then yesterday, I went and signed up for personal training, and the trainer I was signing up with happened to be a trainer Nic and I trained with a few times, a long time ago.”

The coincidences kept coming, Chrisley said, when Kerdiles’s Peloton profile “popped up” on the equipment, just days before Kerdiles’ birthday. “I feel like it’s just been one slap in the face after another — not the good kind.”

Kerdiles, a former professional hockey player and Nashville area realtor, died in a motorcycle accident in September 2023 at age 29. He proposed to Savannah in December 2018 after having dated since November 2017.

Following Savannah’s confirmation to PEOPLE in July 2020 that the pair decided to call off the engagement and wedding, she later revealed on Instagram in September 2020 that they “decided to call it quits.”

PEOPLE confirmed Savannah’s relationship with Shiver — a former football player who is linked to his estranged wife’s alleged plot to murder him — in September 2023. She made their romance Instagram official that November.