Rebuilt as New
Your new coach, overqualified in Transformation
Hello. My name is Candis Fox. I’m a wealth and Integrity Coach, Facilitator and Speaker. I get overlooked at times because I look young (I’m not) and people assume that I’ve only ever lived a charmed life because of how I live right now.
Tell me, do you believe you can live a good life? If you do, what I say will resonate more. If you don’t believe that you could ever possibly live a good life, then what I’m about to share could put some distance between us. Don’t worry, it’s ok. Do what’s best for you. I hope you enjoy the read regardless.
Now I will share with you some of the ways I have been utterly broken, burned to the ground and reconstructed in a more powerful form. I share because I want you to see how powerful you can be without the kind of suffering I endured. I share because I want you to witness the power of transformation. I share because I want you to see me and decide if who I am resonates with you so we can meet. I want to know you, love you, and watch you fly.
I found a shortcut to unshackling our truest selves and I did it by taking the scenic route. I scouted suffering and disability, bushwhacked new paths of cognitive restoration, and built a life of pleasure that sounded like a damned fairytale to everyone I grew up with.
You want that?
I’m overqualified in the arts of transformation.
My mouth is new as of 3 weeks ago. I even sound like a young child due to the numbness I’m healing through. I was born with an inherited crossbite and I finally, after nearly 40 years, had the opportunity to properly address it.
I’ve been looking forward to this recovery time like a loooooong silent retreat. And though technically, I can speak sooner than expected, I lie there every day. I ponder, wonder, and let my heart slide across the chasms of my synapses.
It occurred to me, that I have been rebuilt in every way that matters to me. I have spent spa days in the crucible of transformation and come out new every time. And while these disabilities do affect my daily life in impactful, often unpleasant ways (there’s no gaslighting here, folx,) I have found ways to make them work for me. Wanna see?
Losing my Right Hand, Gaining my Left
When I was in my early 20’s, I nearly lost my right hand. I had been a star softball player and I wrote in a journal every night. My right hand was incredibly important to me.
I had been diagnosed with Kienbock’s disease. It came out of NOWHERE. I didn’t have any of the prerequisite or “normal” pathologies for it. It seems I was just born with a longer radius than I needed and it was blocking my lunate from receiving blood all of a sudden.
I was told I needed surgery and didn’t have a way to advocate better for myself, so I had a surgery. I learned how to do everything with my left hand because I was in a cast for over 9 months.
During my junior year finals in college at PLU, I was in a cast, sprained my ankle, and got horribly sick. My accomodations were to hobble my way up to the library on one crutch to use the dictation software which was brand new at the time.
I ended up typing all my final papers single-handedly that semester and just BARELY made the deadline. For some context, I was a French and English double major. ALL my finals were written!
My hands were retrained to be more balanced, powerful and strong together.
Nowadays, I have some mild arthritis, but I can still use my right hand in a limited capacity. The bones are healthy. I forget about it most days.
I learned who I was without my physical strength.
Losing my Mind, Gaining my Intuition
When I was 27, I had a traumatic brain injury (TBI). For months, I couldn’t stand for more than 8 mins without vomiting. I burned all my food because as soon as I’d walk out of the kitchen, I’d 100% forget that I was cooking until I smelled burning - then I’d freak out because I thought I’d had a stroke.
I lost over 20 pounds that summer . . . down to 107. I’m not meant for that weight.
It took me 2 years of constant work to heal my brain through the migraines, dizziness, disconnected living, executive function deficits, goldfish memory, and the curious pain of being so present-minded that nothing else could exist.
I lost touch with friends, became isolated, and filled my calendar with medical appointments.
One day I applied for a job and I got it. I was terrified because I genuinely didn’t know if I could LEARN anymore.
Once I realized that I could learn, I went on a deep dive into cognitive function: energetically, neurologically, chemically, and functionally. My therapists and doctors taught me their methods. I studied like a motherfucker for 3 years.
And then I opened my first business as a cognitive therapist.
I learned who I was without my mind. I made decisions with my intuition because that was literally all that was available to me. I had no reason to believe that I could learn, but I applied for that job anyway because it felt like the right thing to do - and it was.
Losing Sex, Gaining Pleasure
For anyone who’s ever spent time with me in a more casual setting, y’all know I’m very sexually fluid and willing to share and explore what that means to me. I love my sexuality.
I’ve been out and proud since I was 12, so every 12 years on my birthday, I throw a “BirthGAY” party, complete with 2 humping pinatas filled with condoms, lube, candy, and tiny booze bottles. Imagine rainbows of pie delighting the mouths of my guests as they decide whether or not to give me a birthday spanking before taking a whack at the pinatas.
My body has a sexual wisdom that is far older than it is. I’ve never felt shame for an orgasm. Never tried to hide my pleasure from my intimate lovers. Never faked an orgasm. I never felt a need to be anything but honest with my pleasure.
Then in 2023, I had a hysterectomy that landed me with pudendal nerve damage. This means that half of my taco and choco have no sensation and don’t work. It also means that one of the major nerves that runs through my left leg doesn’t work. This nerve damage has been described to me as
“so awful people commit suicide over it.”
I understand why. It’s not just about the pain. It’s what I lost also. I never had reckless sex, always tested after new partners. I was religious about my sexual health. I prized my ability for spontaneous arousal and celebrated it often. I cherished my sexuality as a part of my identity - and I lost it.
Alongside my hormone nightmare of a journey, I felt like I had lost one of the most crucial parts of myself - something I always cherished about who I was.
I learned who I was without sex.
I masturbated for science - literally and not as a joke - as I began rehabbing my deadened nerves. I had weekly dry needling/Frankensteining sessions to spark its growth. I was making mediocre progress.
Then I met someone who straddled me and gave me a kiss on our first date. My nerves lit up in ways they hadn’t in over 1.5 years. While they’re still healing, I have learned so much more about pleasure than I could’ve hoped. My partner and I share a dynamic that seems like a fairytale when I write it down, but it’s as real as the breath they conjure from my chest.
My life has become tantric in ways I could’ve only written about in a quick smut story. I get off on my mistakes. I get off on the breeze blowing the grass in my yard. I get off on forgiving myself and accepting life. I feel a more consistent sense of pleasure than I ever had before in the most mundane of things.
Losing a Voice, Gaining my Bite
I’m a Gemini sun with a Gemini Chiron. That can mean many things, but one that’s ringing true for me currently is this:
I was born to share. Share information, experiences, love, struggle - all of it regeneratively. That’s my sun in Gemini. I was also born to have such a narrow, but poignant and potent path to walk in order for me to shine brightly - that’s my chiron as it relates to my sun sign.
Someday, if it hasn’t happened already, my writing and speaking will help others heal themselves in ways that I will never be able to quantify or qualify. I know this. I have known it my whole life. I had a vision of my name in a book when I was just 8 years old.
I fought against being a teacher. I fought against being a writer. I fought against so many impactful aspects of who I am because I couldn’t find any or many influences that I trusted or that resonated with me. I couldn’t see myself as “those things” because I couldn’t see others enough “like me” to model myself after. In order to accept any of those titles from anyone else, I first had to surrender to the “being” of it in my own way.
More importantly, I realized that if I felt resistance to something, it meant that there was actually something to resist - i.e. some truth there to be unearthed.
The titles I resist are the ones I grow into.
You know where I didn’t feel resistance? With people who insisted they knew me better than I knew myself. Ohmygoodness did I spend a long time trying to listen to their benevolent contempt instead of my own truth! I was trying to stay open-minded at the cost of my own voice. Oops. Ha ha. How silly of me.
I dated so many people who corrected my tone, voice, and approach to life. I hired so many professionals who wanted to be right more than they listened so they could correct my path for me. I preferred their cruelty and limited view of myself to the blinding, rawness raging within me - I was afraid of my own power. I made myself dim to survive. It worked when I needed it. No regrets. I’d even do it again if I felt like I needed to.
And - I was incredibly irresponsible with my own fucking superpowers by not practicing with them more. (I can sense my life coach’s wiiiiiiide grin from here. Hi Cathy!)
To others even then I still might have already seemed audacious or outspoken because I was in comparison to others they know. I have rarely been one to hide. However, I’m not really into comparisons. I’m into being myself.
Now feel a little sorry for anyone who preferred a quieter, more compliant version of me, because they may feel betrayed by who I have become - more me and less them. They may feel blindsided by my newly unrestrained brilliance and my unwillingness to apologize for it. I’m not here to make them feel better about staying small or dim. I’m not here to perfectly reflect their own shine back to them so they can bask in it and correct me on how much more precise my reflection of them can become.
Fuck them. I’m here for me. I’m here for you. In all our glorious mess.
When you’re ready to love your mess just as much as your success, Take my free, short quiz and get on my calendar.
As I’ve been reconstructing my mouth, my language has also been changing. I’ve had to become economical with my speech, more creative with my expression - bold, concise, and elegant. I’m no longer just a poet, I’m a king, a jester, and a freaky-ass hermit/witch living in a shack near the castle. They’ve all taken up residence in my mouth and I have no plans for eviction.
Welcome to the Royal party!
Candis Fox, Author & Coach
While writing books and healing from DOUBLE JAW SURGERY is amazing, it doesn’t YET pay any of my bills.
I want you to contribute what feels good, exciting, and easy for you to give. The money you gift will translate to incredibly affordable or free Wealth & Integrity Coaching sessions with me and BIPOC entrepreneurs. Keep your eyes open and ready to see them fly!