When Life Calls for a Rewrite
- Jan 13
- 3 min read
By Candice Suarez
When I think about some of my favorite things to do in life, I land on socializing around food. It’s the small gatherings of friends and family over great food that I imagine most fondly. I love to go out to dinner. I relish in the coffee chats with friends and work connections.
Lucky for me, my career of choice has allowed me to use my gift of gab. I’m an educator by nature and love to speak and present ideas. When I worked in schools, I often found myself doing the morning announcements, leading assemblies, running groups and having lunch chats with groups of kids. As a life coach, I get to conduct workshops, run groups, network and chit chat with colleagues and prospective clients.
Talking and eating. My favorite things.
It’s how I find connection. It’s how I find joy.
So you can imagine how jarring a diagnosis of tongue cancer was in the winter of 2021. I had just started my life coaching business earlier in the year and had begun college coaching not much before that. Now I was faced with uncertainty.
My biggest and most constant question to my medical team was “how long?” I was truly lucky that my prognosis for survival was positive, and I never truly felt my life was in danger. So I wanted to know how long it would take me to speak “normally” again. I wanted to know how long it would be before I could eat “normally” again. There was a plan. I would make it through this. But what would my life of talking and eating be on the other side of it?
“It depends.”
This is a frustrating answer when your two favorite things are on the line. Uncertainty is uncomfortable. It turns out that I could begin speaking again—albeit roughly—within a few days and more easily as time went on. However, my voice is permanently altered. I needed to find the confidence to share out loud (that took quite a bit longer). Eating was a longer struggle. I had a feeding tube inserted into my abdomen for nine months, which allowed me to get the hydration and nutrition I needed through protein shakes. Very, very slowly I learned to swallow again and was able to eat enough food through my mouth to have my tube removed.
Eating and talking now is definitely different. It’s funny how things I never had to think about are now strategically planned processes. I don’t hesitate to speak whenever and wherever.
I know I can be somewhat difficult to understand, but I roll with it, just much more carefully and slowly.
This whole journey for me is why, more than ever, I connect so powerfully with those in transition. They’re in that same space of figuring out who they are in a time of major uncertainty. They are navigating big emotions, unsure of what’s ahead, and craving connection. It’s that magic space of becoming—not really knowing what is on the other side of this huge, life-changing transition—but knowing that you have to navigate it anyway. You have to move forward.
Helping people find their footing in the midst of change is what I do best. I know what it’s like to feel unsure, to lose something essential, and to slowly build a new version of yourself piece by piece. I still love talking and eating, but I also have found other ways to enjoy connection with others. That’s what my coaching appoach—life drafting—is all about: creating a flexible, evolving version of your life that allows for edits, detours, and growth.
Connect With Candice
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