Julianne Hough on married life, best friends and not letting a disease limit her

Julianne Hough is a total triple threat. The actress, dancer and choreographer is always tackling new projects from starring in feature films (more on that below!) and touring for her MOVE Live dance tour, all the while making time for her family, friends and herself.

We caught up with the star this month at BlogHer Health, where she shared the story of her journey with endometriosis through a new campaign called SpeakENDO. See what she had to say about not letting a disease slow her down, what married life is like and what's on the horizon for 2018 below!

Endometriosis is a chronic and painful disease that affects an estimated 1 in 10 women of reproductive age. What made you want to start first speaking out about your experience with the disease?

I think the first time that I spoke out about it was more so out of like "I have no idea really what this is." I was just diagnosed with it. I was very scared and I was so afraid it was going to define me and limit me. It was sort of that moment of being like "no, like I don’t want this to limit me, so I’m going to take control over this." Then later on, you know, I did another campaign about endo and that campaign to me was less about me and more about others. I realized that so many women have endometriosis and don’t even realize it, and 1 in 10 women do and so it was sort of a wake up call of like, "I can actually use this to help people."

What has the response been like since sharing your journey?

There was such an amazing response from people, and even [from people] in my friend group who’ve known I had it, I mean just the awareness has grown so much that they're now reaching out like, "wow, I actually ended up going to the doctor and I have endometriosis and I never knew that, but I never would’ve even checked if I hadn’t seen your campaign from last year."

What is it like being married to professional hockey player, Brooks Laich?

It's like marrying your best friend and getting to just experience life together, and having an intimate relationship as well is pretty awesome.

You two always seem to be on the go. What do you and Brooks like to do together when you both have free time?

We bring people to our house! We have game nights, we do cooking parties where we'll make pizza in the kitchen and have a taco bar, and we'll just have people come to our house and we love to go to peoples' houses. Going out is great, but it’s so much more fun to build and create your home and stuff like that, whether it’s at your home or your friend’s home. So we're homebodies that way.

We love seeing you and your group of friends on social media supporting and celebrating each other. What is the best part of surrounding yourself with a group of girlfriends?

Talking, [having] conversations, being vulnerable and asking for help. I think that we're so conditioned to do everything on our own, which is great, I mean that gives us such strength and ability to take care of ourselves, but at the same time to ask for help is a huge weight lifted and also a gift to give to somebody else. We love to get deep.

What can you tell us about your upcoming movie, "Bigger," about the founders of fitness?

It was really cool to be able to portray somebody who was a pioneer of something, who had a vision and was a part of a movement. I couldn’t even imagine my life without fitness, because it's not even a part of my life -- it is my life, so the fact that I was able to be a part of something that really defined our lifestyle, it was a huge honor. And I hope that I can do justice to the character, but also be inspired myself to think about what the next movement is and be apart of that in our generation.

Julianne Hough through the years