- Samantha Harris tells PEOPLE that revealing her second cancer diagnosis to her daughters Josselyn, 17, and Hillary, 13, was “a lot more challenging, emotionally” because “when they were three and six, they had never heard the word cancer”
- “Our little one is very intuitive and she knew something was going on. So she kind of forced it out of us about three days before our older daughter came home, and she had to take it in and deal with it without her big sister home, which was really hard,” Harris further recalls of the diagnosis reveal
- When it comes to talking with teens about cancer, Harris says it’s important to be mindful about which resources to consult
Just months after celebrating the 10 year anniversary of being cancer-free, Samantha Harris never expected she’d be gearing up to face another journey with breast cancer.
The former Dancing with the Stars co host had just launched a podcast, Your Healthiest Healthy, when a lump she had been monitoring for a year turned out to be an invasive ductal carcinoma in the same location her first cancer appeared.
She revealed the diagnosis on social media on August 14, explaining that the news was something she “never thought that I would be sharing again in my lifetime.”
In a follow up video, she emphasized that the recurrence was found “very early” and the lump was “tiny.”
“I am going to live and thrive and live my Healthiest Healthy life possible,” she says in the video shared August 15.
But before sharing her news with the world, Harris had to sit down and tell her teenage daughters, Josselyn, 17, and Hillary, 13. Harris tells us that this time around, sharing the diagnosis with her girls was more difficult.
“It was a lot more challenging, emotionally, to share that information, because when they were three and six, they had never heard the word cancer,” Harris, who shares her daughters with husband Michael Hess, says. “They didn’t know what that was. So however we wanted to share it, spin it, that’s what they were going to absorb.”
Samantha Harris on the day of her surgery in August 2024.
Samantha Harris/Instagram
Harris said she knew it would be different this time around after years of hearing their mom talk about her journey and seeing depictions on TV and in movies of how diagnoses can play out.
“So when we had to share the words with them that I had cancer again, I couldn’t even get the words out,” she recalls.
Because Josselyn was away on a summer program, Harris and her husband wanted to wait the two weeks until she returned to tell both daughters together but Hillary knew something was wrong.
“Our little one is very intuitive and she knew something was going on,” Harris explains. “So she kind of forced it out of us about three days before our older daughter came home, and she had to take it in and deal with it without her big sister home, which was really hard.”
“And then to sit on the couch as a family of four and look across the couch at my 17-year-old and have to tell her, where everyone else in the room already knew, that was when I completely broke down again,” Harris continues. “Because sharing that information with her, even though it’s a great prognosis, even though I’m going to be around for decades to come and I couldn’t have asked for a smaller tumor, a better performing tumor, a better outcome from this diagnosis, sharing the words with your child, ‘I have cancer,’ is soul-crushing.”
Harris says though she and her husband gave their girls an option of if they wanted to be at the hospital on the day of her surgery, it “wasn’t even a question” for the teens.
“They have been quite amazing and helping through my recovery,” she says following her August 13 procedure.
While her girls were too young to know the details of her treatment 10 years ago, Harris says she’s an “open book” with them following this diagnosis, without getting them too “[in] the weeds.”
“This time around it was very important to my husband and me to include the girls as much as they wanted to be included, and also honor what they were ready to and willing to accept in terms of the information as it was coming at us,” she explains.
Through her years of research and as a certified health coach, Harris recognizes she has a vocabulary that reaches beyond what some of her loved ones know about cancer.
Samantha Harris in 2021.
Gregg DeGuire/WireImage
“They may not actually need all those details or want all of those details because it is overwhelming, and I speak a language they don’t necessarily speak,” she says.
When it comes to talking with teens about cancer, Harris says it’s important to be mindful about which resources to consult.
“Really helping them to understand there are better choices online to seek out answers and there are more detrimental ways to surf online,” she says of her efforts. “If they just Google ‘breast cancer’ or the type of breast cancer you have, they may end up getting a lot of misinformation and scary information, to be honest.”
Harris says she often directs people to Susan G. Komen and the American Cancer Society — two organizations for which she serves as an ambassador.
“Whether it’s a beauty product or a cancer treatment, the idea of just hearing about it or watching a video on social media and then claiming that that is the end-all-be-all is a big red flag,” she says.
Looking ahead, with radiation “off the table,” the next step in Harris’ journey is reconstructive surgery in November and a likely course of anti-estrogen medication. But a month after her surgery, Harris tells PEOPLE that she’s “feeling fantastic.”
“The great thing is, both times I never felt sick from the cancer. I never felt the effects of having this lump in my breast that was cancerous,” she explains. “And I’m really grateful for that.”
And just as she has for the last 10 years, Harris is continuing to share her experience online through her podcast and on Instagram in hopes of helping others who might be facing the same journey.
Samantha Harris.
Samantha Harris/Instagram
“One of the most amazing things that has come out of this recurrence and sharing it, and deciding to share it so publicly, has been the outpouring of support from the breast cancer survivor rockstar community,” Harris says. “But at the same time, also, even though I’m in the midst of my second journey with this, wanting to continue to guide even more and share what I’m learning, what I have learned with them, and I have been so grateful to just see the responses.”
“It’s been a lot of time on my phone, but I really want to answer every single person who reaches out to me,” she continues. “It’s becoming almost more than I can keep up with, but I’m really trying hard to do that because it means a lot to me, and I’m grateful for them as well — to have them in my life.”
