Elizabeth Henson

Doing the Big Scary Thing: Inside One Woman’s First Live Performance

9/02/2026

Date

Some ideas sit quietly for years before we finally do anything about them. In this episode, Elizabeth sits down with her friend Candice West to talk about doing the big scary thing, the leap most people never take, and why detachment from outcome might be the skill that changes everything.

Candice West is an advanced practice nurse, somatic practitioner, and founder of The Soma Center, bringing nearly 30 years of healthcare experience and an advanced understanding of the body’s physiology and pathophysiology into the holistic healing space. She bridges clinical knowledge with somatic wisdom to offer a whole-person approach that honors both the science of how the body functions and the innate intelligence it holds. Right now, she is 19 days out from producing her first ever live performance, Permission Granted, at the Sandler Center in Virginia Beach. She has never produced a show before. She has never directed anything at this scale. And yet here she is, still standing, still committed, even after her lead dancer broke her foot and tore a tendon just days before this conversation was recorded.

The idea first came to Candice two years ago, in the same month she published her memoir, Permission Granted: From Who I’ve Been to Who I’m Becoming. It disappeared almost as quickly as it arrived. Two years later, on March 3rd, it came back, this time with enough clarity that she couldn’t ignore it. She sat with it for a month before finally deciding to move forward. What changed in those two years, she says, wasn’t the idea itself. It was her. She needed the time to heal parts of herself she had disowned before she was ready to hold what this project would ask of her.

Much of the conversation centers on detachment, what Candice calls the art of detachment, and how she’s had to practice it in real time as things have gone sideways. A dancer’s injury. Slower than hoped ticket sales. Performers pulling out last minute. Instead of treating these as signs to quit, Candice keeps coming back to a question that guides her: if not me, then who. She and Elizabeth also dig into the myth of financial risk, the pressure to stay small, and why Candice ultimately chose the biggest venue in town instead of the safer, smaller room everyone expected her to pick.

This episode is a permission slip for anyone who has been sitting on their own big scary thing. As you listen, sit with the question Candice leaves us with: what have you learned from the versions of yourself you once wanted to leave behind? Listen in, and then go take your next step.

SHOW NOTES:

06:14 Meet Candice West

06:54 The wisdom your body already knows

08:40 Zero experience, one wild idea

10:28 What changed in two years

12:18 The art of detachment

13:47 Nineteen days out and no dancer

19:07 The dream outcome she’s chasing

23:49 The belief she’s still unlearning

29:08 What Permission Granted really is

33:37 The cliff jump that changed everything

44:11 Is this show for you