Hayley Erbert is feeling stronger than ever one year after she underwent emergency brain surgery, and she marked the anniversary with a special performance with her husband Derek Hough.
On Thursday, Dec. 5, the couple returned to the same stage where their lives had changed completely last year, as Erbert had been rushed to the hospital following their show, diagnosed with a cranial hematoma from a burst blood vessel and underwent an emergency craniectomy, as Hough revealed in an Instagram post at the time.
“It’s been exactly one year since Hayley almost lost her life,” Hough, 39, wrote on Instagram alongside a video of himself and his wife onstage yesterday. “We returned to the very same stage, the same room where we once felt so much fear and uncertainty. A place where I stood frozen, terrified, praying for a miracle.”
In the video, he said that performing again on the same stage where tragedy had struck allowed them to “change the story…to something beautiful,” before he invited Dr. Mai — who he said “saved Hayley’s life” — onstage with them, too.
In the post’s caption, Hough wrote, “We changed the story of that room. We transformed it, from fear to beauty, from uncertainty to faith, and from despair to triumph.”
He credited his wife — who he married just four months before her emergency surgery — for her “resilience, strength courage and pure elegance in how she has moved through this experience” as he wrote, “I am in awe everyday.”
“One year later, standing on that same stage, we know this: life is fragile, love is everything, and we are stronger than ever,” he concluded his post.
Though the performance was special as it honored the anniversary of Erbert’s near-death experience, it’s not the first time the couple has danced together since her recovery.
In April, she returned to the stage with her husband as he kicked off his Symphony of Dance tour in Melbourne, Florida, and in October, they returned to the Dancing with the Stars ballroom together for the first time.
After the performance, Erbert, 30, told PEOPLE, “It was extremely special to be out here.”
“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.”
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Hough was emotional, too, as he admitted to PEOPLE that in the depths of his wife’s recovery, “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,” he said.
“Tonight was just sort of the beginning of telling the full story,” he continued. “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.”
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