Candace Woodson
Candace Woodson will tell you she is back on top. Back from breast cancer, a total mastectomy and reconstructive surgery. The woman who began singing inspirational songs at church when she was barely 5 years old has a personal message to share with the world: “Don’t give up.”
National Cancer Survivors Day was recognized on June 7, and Woodson’s message of survival is one she is determined to share. “I’m a breast cancer survivor,” she said. “God let me live, so I’ve let it go, and I’m living life to the fullest.”
Candace Woodson performance
That includes doing what she loves. Twenty–nine days after her surgery at MUSC to remove a cancerous tumor from her breast and lymph nodes, she was back at work. Not at a desk. Not in an office. No, Candace Woodson was on stage performing at the wedding reception of Justice Mellencamp — John Cougar Mellencamp’s daughter — in Sea Pines Plantation on Hilton Head Island. And as she dazzled the crowd, it wasn’t because she sat on a stool singing low–key love ballads.
No, Candace Woodson gave the audience full–tilt versions of Aretha Franklin, Tina Turner, Chaka Khan and Michael Jackson classics, leaving them exhausted from dancing to“old–school grooves” as she calls them.
