Abby Lee Miller Makes ‘Dance Moms’ Return in Midst of Cancer Battle

Abby Lee Miller is making her return to Dance Moms, while still in the midst of her battle with cancer.

As seen in a new promo clip for the new Dance Moms Resurrection series, the 52-year-old is seen being fully transparent about her struggles with the illness and how hard she has had to fight to get back to where she is now.

“In an instant, your life changes completely,” Miller is heard saying as footage from her cancer treatment and hospital stays plays. “I was ready to go back to work and start my life over and now I can’t even walk.”

“I need to get back to teaching and I need to get back to screaming at children,” she goes on to say. “I need to get back to my roots. I’m going to take these kids right back to the turf.”

Eventually, Miller is shown returning to her dance studio and being greeted by a roomful of students.

“There’s people that counted me out, thought I was finished, considered the ALDC [Abby Lee Dance Company] dead,” she says to the young dancers. “Well I fought hard to be here and you have to be a fighter too. You have to fight to get those legs straight, fight to get better feet, you have to fight to be a champion.

“I have my own personal goals and I have goals for the team,” she adds in a confessional to the camera. “I need to be ready for that first competition. We need to make a statement on that stage that the ALDC is back … and watch out!”

Miller’s cancer battle has made many headlines over the past year, with the reality TV star first undergoing surgery in April 2018 for what was thought to be a spinal issue, but turned out to be non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

“It was not an infection, it was a type of a non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma — it’s a type of a cancer,” Cedar Sinai Marina Del Rey Hospital’s orthopedic spine surgeon Dr. Hooman M. Melamed said after treating Miller, per PEOPLE.

“We’re getting an oncologist involved and we have to figure out what the next steps are as far as chemotherapy or radiation or more spine surgery. Depending on the tumor type, depending on the sensitivity of the tumor — it just depends the type but I feel more than yes, she will undergo chemotherapy or radiation,” Dr. Hooman added.

Dance Moms Resurrection will debut on Lifetime in June.