Six months after patriarch Eric Dane died following a battle with ALS, his family’s prognosis is strong. 

As wife Rebecca Gayheart-Dane and their daughter Billie, 16, and Georgia, 14, navigate their grief over losing the beloved Grey’s Anatomy actor, “It’s really a season of growth for all of us,” she told E! News’ Erin Lim Rhodes in an exclusive interview. “Life is hard for us right now. But we are getting through, and we are soldiering on.”

In fact, Gayheart-Dane is marching towards an exciting new assignment as she works on the musical adaptation of her 1999 dark comedy Jawbreaker.

And for the 55-year-old, the project is so much more than a role. 

“I took many years off to be a stay-at-home mom,” she explained, “so now it’s really important for me to do this musical and show my kids that this is, number one, what we do as women. We go back to work. We say yes to things that are scary. And also, we do that even when life is hard.”

Though Gayheart-Dane is admittedly “not a singer,” she was eager to sign on to the musical, noting, “I love doing things out of my comfort zone.”