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Hughes had just sealed promotion with Palace when she suffered her ACL injury, but attention quickly turned to Wales.
“Obviously the injury at the time was really bad. It came in a season for me that I thought I did really well in,” Hughes told BBC Sport Wales.
“I returned in February already knowing that the girls had qualified for us, and so then it was just an added motivation to be back and to be better and to be ready for the stage this summer.
“I was out for nine months. I fought every day to try and make it shorter but that’s just not safe.”
Hughes says the road to recovery from an ACL injury is tougher than people realise, but she found the hardest thing was not being able to immediately return to play at the same standard.
“Obviously, at the start, you strip it right back to obviously learning to walk again, and you just never think that’s going to be you,” she said.
“You obviously know that an ACL injury plagues the women’s game in particular, but you just never think it’s going to be you until it’s you.
“But I feel like I didn’t really understand it, I didn’t really accept it until like three or four months in.
“Everyone is different. For me the hardest part for me was returning because I didn’t return the same as when I left. And that was hard for me because I just thought I was going to come back in and be fit and firing, but I had just spent the best part of a season out of the game.
“No one prepares you for that moment. For me personally, the hardest part was coming back because of the expectations I have for myself.”
