While Danielle admitted that she previously thought she’d “suffer in silence” if she was ever diagnosed with cancer, she decided to open up on the experience after learning a lesson from author and motivational speaker Glennon Doyle.  

“She often talks about how a lot of people like to save sharing their experiences until they’ve come out on the other side of it so they can say, ‘Here’s the pretty picture of it all, here’s what I’ve learned,’” Danielle added. “But the place you have the most to learn from is at the very beginning of a story, or in the very messy middle of a story.”

After hearing her diagnosis, Danielle’s initial reaction was to only share the news with her husband Jensen Karp—with whom she shares kids Adler, 5, and Keaton, 2—her parents and her brother. But she quickly learned she gained a lot from opening up.