Leadership, Chronic Illness, and Purpose: The Wisdom of Healthcare Consultant Susan York

In this episode of Beyond My Diagnosis, I sit down with Susan York, a seasoned healthcare and automotive consultant whose decades of experience inform her life’s newest chapter: supporting women leaders in discovering their voice, clarifying their vision, and translating intention into action.

Susan shares her journey through leadership, caregiving, reinvention, and the emotional and spiritual work of choosing a future aligned with personal truth. We explore the role of intuition, healing, resilience, and what it means to pivot later in life with courage and clarity.

Our conversation is thoughtful, tender, and rich with insight about the inner work required when healing intersects with personal growth.

In this episode, you will learn:
• How Susan shifted from decades of consulting to guiding women toward their personal vision
• Why alignment matters more than achievement in the next chapter of life
• How caregiving and life disruptions reshape identity and intention
• What it means to listen to your inner knowing when navigating transition
• Why women often silence their desires and how to reclaim them
• How quarterly women’s workshops help participants turn intention into real change
• The importance of community when rewriting your story

About Susan:
With more than three decades of consulting across healthcare, dentistry, and automotive leadership, Susan York now focuses on empowering women to move from intention to inspired action. She leads FutureWalk Network, a platform dedicated to vision-based workshops for women seeking clarity and momentum in their personal and professional lives.

Susan’s Link:
🔗 http://futurewalknetwork.com

Transcript

0:00

(Music) Hello, this is Michelle Weston with, well, chronic conditions. Let's start there. I think that being an expert and being the audience for living with a chronic condition or conditions, again, for the past few years I've been doing a podcast called Learning Curse 2.0. But I really wanted to explore more. I wanna talk about thriving beyond a diagnosis. I wanna talk about being an empowered patient. I wanna talk about reclaiming your health and I want you to think about how you live well with chronic condition. And that's not just your health, but that's also your wealth and your well-being. And as a coach and as a patient advocate, I've met some amazing people through friends and through business and through getting out there and meeting people. And today I've got someone down in Texas who I really is a new person I really adore. Her name is Susan York. And Susan, I'm gonna let you describe what you do because it's so much better when you can do your elevator speech better than I can.(Laugh) So Susan, how are you? I am 71 years old and I live with Lupus. And I also am still working. I am a coach for dentists and office managers around the country and have been doing that since 2017. I just sold my automotive division of my company to my daughter, which has been in the works where she started working for me in 2015 and she's now the CEO of dealer boost. So I am strictly into healthcare and that's where I got my start as a consultant and with my husband, Michael. I got diagnosed with Lupus in 2005. And immediately they put me on 60 milligrams of prednisone a day. That's what we used to do. In 2009 I was diagnosed, I had infusions of prednisone, you were like, my God. Yes, so at that time nobody told me not to eat sugar or carbohydrates with prednisone, you're starving all the time. And within a year I was 291 pounds from 150, okay? So- My God. It was just the Lupus. I now had serious hypertension, I had serious issues. Health- I mean, you had obesity, it's like obesity, hypertension, possible diabetes. But here's this Lupus as what you started with. And isn't that enough? Yeah, yeah. So somewhere around 2016, in 2016, I was clear I was dying. I mean, there was no- my husband was totally concerned, worried, and I pretty much had given up. And at that time I said, okay, we're gonna have to do something drastic. And of course, this is before I was in big and everything else like that. Yeah. And I said, okay, let's go have bariatric surgery and get a sleeve and let's go from there, okay? And yeah, I did lose weight. I lost about 60 pounds and that was great. Yeah. But my life really didn't kick in until I said, okay, I have to start lifting weights and I have to change my life completely. And in 2018, I started lifting weights three times a week and have not stopped and now up to six times a week. I love it. And what I have learned in the last year is that women our age, post menopausal must lift heavy, must lift heavy. And I'm now in a athletes in motion class. I've always wanted to be an athlete and I'm lifting heavy weights, bench pressing, just it's so exciting doing all sorts of things I never thought possible. But I've also- It empowers you, right? I mean, I feel like that when I do Pilates. So there is my osteoporosis fix because I'm going against my body weight. So it's hard and I love it. Like you said, you start with three days a week and now you're doing it six times a week because it gives you that sense of self and you know you're doing something so good for yourself that you have to do, right? Yes. Nobody else can do this. You gotta do it. They're wonderful. And somewhere around this last year, I experimented with different eating styles and I had read Plant Paradox by Steven Grundy and I tried to actually get off meds and I went into a massive lupus flare this lunch. Yeah, sometimes you need to find that balance, right? So how do you find that balance? I love when they say just get off your meds. Not all of us can do that as a patient. You just, you can't. So now where's the happy medium? Yeah, I had to discover for myself that I am going to be on anti-inflammatories and have leaky gut, you know, so that was a whole other thing. I had to actually start researching and I found a great functional medicine doctor. Amazing. You know, and I had to experiment with different eating styles and what works for my body because I'm going to have to be on medication. There's no getting off of it and there's no amount of anti-inflammatory eating that will ever work for me. So, yeah, that was kind of a rude awakening. I was really surprised and I was also surprised about how severe the flare was. Wow. You know, it wasn't a light flare. It was like I had trouble walking and, you know, it was kind of devastating. And scary, scary, right? I have drop foot and, you know, especially at the beginning, it is when that drop foot is bad and I'm in an exacerbation, it is scary that I'm going to fall. You know, I haven't done that a long time, like you're saying, but it's pretty. Yeah. So I'm back on medication. I am still eating anti-inflammatory and loving it and, you know, having a lot more vegetables and stuff in my diet than, you know, no red meat and all the things I, you know, especially in Texas, red meat is my goal on meat potatoes person. And so we eat a lot of fish and it's all that stuff. But the other thing that has happened for me this year is I literally took on, I've always been a disciplined person and I get up very early in the morning. I love my mornings. I love that. But I've now taken on my life as a wellness commitment. And really studying not just mindfulness, but a way of being in the world where that my health is a contribution. Okay. That's a great way to look at it. Yeah. And I have a lot of girlfriends that I have developed like on the beginning of February, I led a vision workshop, vision boarding, but it wasn't just that. It was like, how do you create your vision, your commitment to your health and wellbeing and translate that intention into reality? My whole life has been that. And that is what I do with my doctors that I coach is how do you create an intention and translate that into reality? And that goes for your health, your activities in life. And I've always had a lot of discipline and a lot of structure, but I've now come to, that is what you can make a difference with. When people are ill and they're struggling and they don't know what to do, it starts, like you said, not everybody has money, but everybody has the ability to take themselves on and do the things that will make them healthier. And that takes willpower and that takes a commitment. It takes perseverance. I started lifting weights. My trainer said to me, and it was in her house,"Pick a word that is your word." And my first year was perseverance. I will persevere through this. And the next year was steadfast. And the next after that was something else. But it has been, for me, learning how that I have the commitment to lead a healthy life. And so a lot of what I'm talking to people about now is where do you find that perseverance? Where do you find your commitment to be a healthy, vibrant person? And I love what you said about money, because most of the time that I've been working, I've always saved money. I've always put money aside. Which is a skill I envied. Even my brother and sister are very good at it. I just was sort of like, I'll think about it tomorrow, I'm gone with the wind. Gone with the wind? Yes. Well, you know, that's what I did. What I do now is I put money into a savings account every single week. Okay? And that goes in there. And we have CDs and stuff like that as a couple. But I told Michael,"We don't touch that." Because what I have learned is that if you do get cancer, the insurance and supplementals do not cover. And you have to be prepared that cancer treatments have so improved that you could actually recover from cancer. You can't recover if you do not have the resources to do that. And so at different times, you say,"Well, let's do this and let's do this with the money." I said, "That money is not touchable because if I got cancer, you would be very upset if you didn't have the money to do monoclonals or whatever they're called." Yeah, whatever. My brother is going through right now. Yes. The past year, he's going through cancer and he just had a third surgery to remove more lymph nodes. But he looks great. He's lost weight. He got diabetes one before he was diagnosed with cancer. It was a very... 2023-24, I would just yuck. But the point is that you don't know what's coming towards you. And he took owner and agency like you did of his life. And he always was good like you of saving and putting money away for retirement and so forth and being 60. I'm glad that he is as good as he is with that. But it's still scary having this thing hanging over your head because you're doing a new research study and you're involved with it and you're doing these infusions every like three weeks and everything's going fine. And then they do another PET scan or they do another MRI and they find more. And now we have to back up, look in. And people are just like, "I don't even know how you're alive." Well, my brother, thank God, we're tough cookies. Thank God we had parents who... The three of us are tough and he's handling it with such grace and he has lots of support and lots of people praying for him and thinking of him. And that makes me happy hearing you also echo that again. You have to make sure that you put money away and that you're in a good space. God forbid. Hey, if it doesn't, great. Right. You never know what's going to happen in life and you have to be prepared for it. But the other thing that I will say about that, because there's so many people out there that do not have the money put aside to take care of themselves, is that you have to find deep inside of you that sense of the will and the commitment to live and to live graciously and I'm not a religious person, but I am a spiritual person in the sense that I know that there are resources available. And those resources, whether tangible or intangible, I'm committed to accessing. And I think that people need hope. They need to hope that there are things that they can do. But part of that is they have to want to. Yes. Oh, yeah. Yeah. You have to. This is your life. You know that I say this all the time. As the patient, don't hand your life over to your doctors. This is your body and your life. You take control of this. You advocate for you. You decide. I, you know, as I say all the time, I may have MS, but I'm not MS. I don't care that it doesn't have a cause or a cure yet. I'm busy. You know? And you're busy. You know, lupus, people get scared when they hear that. They think, oh, God, the person's just going to die. Every year, new things happen in research. We have more information. We are finding better ways to find quality of life. We have more and more disease modifying therapies. So don't give up. Don't. Exactly. Right? And that's, and both of us are not being flippant and not saying that just casually. We take it on spiritually or religiously. I still think it's the same thing. You know, light is light and the universe is the universe. And we have to remember, we're part of that. And there are things bigger than us. And I love that we fit into something bigger than us. And as you said, you know, own yourself, have your life, live your life, and know that you are in doing that. You affect others and you affect the world. Yeah. And I want to talk about that right there because I have the personal experience, a person who lived in isolation. And when you live in isolation and you do not connect with the world, okay, with people on a daily basis, your soul gets ill. You get, you get. Yeah. Hanged. Okay. You have to connect with people. You have to go out and you have to actually seek relationships. You know, the US right now is really suffering in a certain way and people are hurting. And part of that is we have become so isolated and we're living inside of this thing instead of the connection with people. And we, there, you know, I work with doctors who are working with 20 something. So they are like, I can't get them out of their phones. And I said, well, there's a drawer and you can lock them in there. Yeah, no, absolutely. I know. Take care of patients. If you're not connecting with patients, you got it. Listen, I do the same. Listen, even when my nieces and nephews, when they were in their 12 and they're still not as nice, there are times when they come visit me when we go out for a meal, give me the phone and they're like, no, I said, this is the deal. You may keep the phone of you are curing cancer or you're finding world peace. Are you doing either one of those two things? Then give me the phone for the next hour and a half and then freak out. But you know what? I want to see them. I want to look at them. I want to, I want to have a conversation with you, not you doing this. Yeah. We, you know, we, you know, streaming does not replace, uh, being able to connect with people. Okay. Your Snapchat or whatever it is you do does not connect. So it's so important that, that if you're suffering from something and you're experiencing illness, that you find ways to connect with people. And that is one of the most empowering things that I have taken on is how do you unhook from social media and clear your mind for other things and reading and connecting. And I'm learning how to play mahjong. Okay. But fun. Okay. So I have a whole group of women that get together every other Thursday and we all play mahjong and it's so exciting to be a part of, you know, people creating different activities and working together. So, you know, uh, what I would say out of this whole conversation is that it's so important that both financially, spiritually, uh, connecting and that you decide that you take care of your wellbeing. Nobody's going to do it for you. No. No, you have to own it and you have to take care of it and that your life makes a difference in it. No matter what you think, no matter how isolated you are, that your life does count. And until you accept that and step into that, you haven't started your wellness adventure and your adventure. And you know, as a coach, you know, I love that the world has changed a bit. We always talked, you know, I have a master's in health and health and wellness coaching. And so I'm very specific. I'm even more specific working with people with a chronic condition and, um, to help them find a better quality of life and make behavior changes so that they have that living with a chronic condition. Um, but what I love is the past year I've been working on a book with other coaches of all different fields. And what's been interesting is the word wellbeing. And we hear that a great deal. What does that mean? You know, reverse it being well. Right. Well-being. Right. Right. And so when you break that down, is it well-being? Is it wellbeing? But you're being well. And we talk about that even in, you know, uh, coaches that work as, um, coaches with, uh, with companies and they work with, uh, executives and the C-suite. If you aren't setting an example for health and wellbeing for your company, for your employees, for everyone below you, why should they do it? And so what do we create? We don't create wellbeing in the workplace. And that's really important because look, illness and conditions show up. Why do they show up? I don't know. We know that cancer lives in everyone. We know that, um, Jewish women, 40% of Jewish women will develop cancer in their lives. That's the statistic now. And that's pretty scary. Um, and you have to go, wow, how would that happen? Because everybody has cells that live in our bodies. Sometimes they get activated. Sometimes they never get activated your whole life. I got activated in regards to MS. And I think really looking back, I'm stressed, something kicked in whatever virus or whatever was going on in my body. And it sort of like was, you know, uh, it's like playing, uh, dominoes where the domino effect is. That's what happened. You know, what happens with people with lupus, what happens with people who get it? Why do these things happen? Why does spending the time of why, why, why poor me? And we all go through poor me, please. I'm not going to say we don't, you know, especially at the beginning. It's so scary. But the point is, is what we really then come to realization that, that Susan and I are talking about is health and wellbeing, having a good life, creating that, being an example of that, you know, and as coaches, we may work in different fields, but our mission, honestly is that we ask you powerful motivational questions that click in your brain, your brain, not ours. We're just asking you questions. And if they inspire you to go, I forgot I know how to do that, or I wanted to do that. That's how you make changes. That's what behavior of change is. That's something fancy schmancy. It's the ability to say, Oh, I didn't think about that. So when you're right, once, once to bedtime, and that's what it coaches different than the therapist, psychologist, psychiatrist, we're there to ask you important motivational, powerful questions. And if we're partnering with our coaches, with our clients, and we can do that, I do it in health and wellness with chronic conditions. And Susan does it in her field to help doctors, to help healthcare teams. My God, I want them to have their best lives as well. And we know the healthcare landscape today is brutal. You know, it is. And this is, as Susan said, the time in the world right now and in the United States, this is a tough one. This is a real tough one. And I think that I plan on staying in the framework of this may be a shakeout, and there's going to be a lot of fallout. But I think in the end, that we will rise to the top and we'll figure out what we needed to figure out from the lessons we learned. So staying aware and staying awake is important, right? Yeah, absolutely. You know, and to not give up on yourself along the way. Absolutely. And we both know, you know, there's moments where that's more challenging. Is it easier having a partner? Yes. You know, I'm just married four years, you know, a 50-something who got married, you know, and was never married before. Everybody's like, "Oh, this must be your second marriage." I'm like, "No." But the thing is, is that when you find someone who you love that much, yes, we love our families, our parents, our siblings, yes, yes, yes, yes, your friends. But when you have a partner, lean on that partner and make sure that you are taking advantage of the strength of you together, especially with a chronic illness. You're hearing, you know, what happened with Susan in 2005, with me, with MS in 2000. Everybody has stuff. And some of us, it takes longer to come out of it. And some of us can just power through it. My brother is a power-thriller, and I'm there but for the grace of God. Honestly, I'm so glad with a diagnosis of cancer that he has that, because it makes me feel more rock solid. He has a great wife who's a great supporter of over 30 years, and that they're doing this together. You're doing this together. Yeah, absolutely. You have to ask people to help you. Go on to places like patientslikeme.com. Utilize sites wherever you have. There's lupus sites, there's MS sites, there's diabetes sites. There is a lot of ways. There's the, what is it called? The Giving Bridge Caregiving? Yeah. Yeah. And that's another website where people who have illnesses can share with each other, not in your life does everybody want to hear about what's going on all the time. I don't want to hear about myself. Right, Susan? I mean, I don't want to talk about it all the time. I always say that. I'm not talking about this. I'm busy. But having the ability to talk to others going through that is important. But coming back to yourself and realizing that you are the most important tool in living your best life means a lot. And I wish you could see Susan. I'll leave her back when I start doing video because she's gorgeous and striking. And she looks so wonderful. And some women age gorgeously into gray hair or gray with white. Well, Susan's one of those with her long hair. My sister-in-law is one of those. Me, I'm not going there. I'm going to stick with my mother. She had red hair. I have my dark hair. Everybody has their thing. But to age gracefully, to live fully is what we're talking about. And I want people to realize there are coaches out there that can help you with chronic conditions. There are coaches that can help you just handle stress management and handle work issues that me also with a chronic illness need to be looked at. How are you so stressed at work? And why do you feel like you're being overlooked because I have an illness? There may be a conversation. Yeah, therapists and psychologists, all of that is great. But sometimes a coach is a good partner. And they're a good partner because of the ability to ask questions. That's what we sign on for. That's what our ethics are. We don't tell you what to do. We let you get there by letting you hear questions that make you go inward. And that's how we create change because you're the one making change. I'm not making change. I'm doing that over here. Absolutely. Yeah. What I do is create an opportunity for you to step into it, but you have to step. Well, I love that we were able to talk today. And I'm going to have you back because there's more to talk about because there's a lot going on. Absolutely. Right. And I thank you for my listeners to hear you, Susan York. As a coach, do you have a website if you're working with people at all? What are you doing? Are you also working with companies and you're doing it solely in a specific way? Right now, I'm working solely with companies, but I'm actually going to be branching out this year. We're working on a project to start doing some work outside of the company I'm working with right now. Okay. So to be continued, I thank you, Susan. Have a great, great day. And you guys come back next week and we'll have somebody else on and we'll discover ways to live with a chronic condition and live your best life. Thanks, Susan. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Beyond the Diagnosis. If something we talked about today resonated with you, if you're craving deeper understanding, better support, or just want to know you're not alone on this journey, make sure to subscribe to my free Substack at michelleweston.substack.com. That's where I share personal insights, expert takeaways, and extra resources to help you stay informed, empowered, and one step closer to the clarity you deserve. And if you found this episode helpful, leave a review or share it with someone who needs to hear it. Your voice helps this message go further. Until next time, keep asking questions, keep trusting yourself, and keep going beyond the diagnosis.