The dancer tells she was “flooded with emotions” watching her journey following her emergency craniectomy in December 2023
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Hayley Erbert Hough was admittedly feeling a whole heap of emotions following her return to the Dancing with the Stars ballroom.
On Tuesday, Oct. 15, the pro dancer and her husband Derek Hough performed a beautiful and tear-filled routine to Benson Boone‘s “Beautiful Things” after an emotional package traced the harrowing health journey Erbert Hough has faced this year.
“When they played the package, that’s when I started losing it, because I actually haven’t seen a lot of the footage in quite some time, because I’ve just been focusing on progressing every single day,” Erbert Hough tells PEOPLE. “And so to go back to that, I was just flooded with emotions.”
In December, Herbert was hospitalized for a cranial hematoma during her and Hough’s ongoing tour and underwent an emergency craniectomy.
In the footage, Hough, 39, said he was told his wife was “essentially dying” before the emergency surgery. “[The doctor] said that she might not make it and that even if she does make it, she don’t be the same person.”
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Erbert Hough tells PEOPLE it was “extremely special” to return to the DWTS ballroom after such a tumultuous year.
“This fall was always the most welcoming energy and it was beautiful to be here, to be able to share it with him. And I’m just grateful to be here.”
Hough tells PEOPLE that the couple’s performance “was just sort of the beginning of telling the full story.”
“We shared a little bit more video and photos of what had happened to show us something to the extent of the severity of it. But this is the beginning, and there’s so much more to tell this story and we’re so excited to share the rest of it.”
He admits that for awhile ” it was not even a thought like, ‘Oh, we’re going to dance again,’ honestly.”
“And then to be here, it’s unbelievable. It’s just hard to put it into words.”
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Erbert says that it was “such a traumatic experience” and a “difficult time,” but she’s focusing on “being grateful for even the smallest things.”
She says gratitude “in those moments [was] so, so important and so powerful because it brought me into a better state — mentally and physically — just to be grateful for all the things in my life. And I truly have so much to be grateful for, even in a time like that.”