The former ‘Dancing with the Stars’ host’s days now consist of planning for upcoming Your Healthiest Healthy retreats and ‘booby PT’

Samantha Harris on the day of her reconstructive surgery (right) and later with her dog during recovery (left). Photo:

Courtesy of Samantha Harris

In the months since Samantha Harris found out her breast cancer had returned 10 years after her initial diagnosis in 2014, she faced another ride on the emotional rollercoaster she was all too familiar with.

Though these days Harris is “feeling great … I think of myself as cancer-free,” she did have a “setback” after the reconstructive surgery she had in November, a few months after the initial surgery to remove the tumor.

Harris explains that after 10 days of her surgeon-mandated bed rest, she got up to go on a walk.

“For most people, that would mean just go walk down the block to the end of your street and come back,” she says. “I went for two days in a row of [about] an hour of walking, thinking that I was walking at a slow pace — but for me, that’s still an incredibly fast pace.”

Samantha Harris on her family trip in Mexico over New Years.

Courtesy of Samantha Harris

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After the two days of movement, the former Dancing with the Stars host noticed her recovery site was “red” and “inflamed.”

“I was immediately so concerned that I had basically undone all the goodness of the surgery and first 10 days of recovery and now was fearing that I had maybe either an infection or that my implant was being rejected,” she continues. “I wasn’t sure what was going on. So, the emotional roller coaster — took that deep dive again.”

But despite the hurdle, after returning to bed rest for a while longer, Harris managed to get back on the “regular six week recovery schedule” which allowed for her to join her family on a celebratory trip to Mexico.

Samantha Harris on her Your Healthiest Healthy retreat in Utah in October 2024.

Courtesy of Samantha Harris

“The one thing that I learned from my initial diagnosis was just how experiences and time together are ever more important than anything to me now in the entire world,” she says.  “Whether it’s time with friends, grabbing a girlfriend for a hike or a girl’s night, a date night with my husband, stealing away on a trip with him, or being able to have these family vacations so that we can create those memories because that’s what will last more than any possessions.”

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As she continues on her recovery journey, she says “the goal now is to make sure that my body is not a host for any circulating tumor cells to decide to settle on a host organ.”

Harris’ days now consist of recording her podcast, Your Healthiest Healthy (which is an extension of her 2018 book), planning to lead more Your Healthiest Healthy retreats, teaching a live weekly Sweat, Stretch & Soothe workout class and continuing her own physical therapy, which she calls “booby PT,” to “keep the cavity of the implant very supple so it doesn’t harden and lead to something called capsular contracture.”

As far as how her family is handling this new chapter of their lives, she says her husband, Michael Hess, and two daughters Josselyn, 17, and Hillary, 14, are “back to business as usual”

“You want to get back to normal or whatever the new normal is,” she says. “And so if this could be a blip on the radar of our daughters’ memories, that would make me very happy.”