Why I Advocate
For Liz. For Steven. For everyone still fighting.
Some posts are hard to write.
This is one of them.
In the past few days, I lost two people who meant a great deal to me and to this community. Liz Healy and Steven Rempel.
I’m not ready to write about them in the past tense.
But here I am.
Liz Healy was one of those people who made you feel like the most important person in the room. Even as her own health declined, she kept showing up. Kept advocating. Kept pouring herself into this community with a generosity that left me speechless more than once.
In December, I had the privilege of sitting down with Liz for a conversation on the Advocacy at Work podcast. She was brilliant, honest, and characteristically generous with her wisdom. If you haven’t listened, I hope you will. It’s the kind of conversation that stays with you.
Listen to my conversation with Liz Healy here
Steven Rempel came into my life the way so many of my most meaningful friendships have—through cancer.
That’s one of the strangest gifts this disease gives you. It strips away the small talk and the surface-level connections and replaces them with something raw and real and lasting.
Steven showed me this better than almost anyone.
At their first Gathering of Wolves retreat, he met Jose—another Man Up To Cancer brother from San Diego. Two men brought together by cancer, by community, by the kind of shared experience that forges friendships faster and deeper than almost anything else in life. They became best friends.
When Jose passed away suddenly after returning from our retreat the second year, the loss was devastating. But what Steven and Jose had built in that time—that friendship, that brotherhood—was proof of something I’ve come to believe deeply: that the connections cancer forces us to make are among the most profound we’ll ever have.
We lost Steven too, who now will be with Jose again.
I think about the two of them often.
The kind of friends you don’t realize you needed until you’re sitting with the fact that they’re gone.
Losing people in this community never gets easier.
I’ve been in the cancer advocacy space for five years now, and I’ve learned that grief doesn’t go away. You just learn to carry it differently. You learn to let it fuel something instead of consuming you.
That’s what advocacy is, for me.
It’s not a career move. It’s not a brand. It’s not something I do because I’m especially brave or especially qualified.
It’s something I do because of people like Liz and Steven. And Jose.
Because they fought so hard, and they deserved better.
Because somewhere right now, someone just got a diagnosis and doesn’t know what comes next.
Because screening saves lives and not enough people know it.
Because patient voices belong in research rooms and legislative chambers and hospital boardrooms.
Because the system doesn’t change itself.
This is why I advocate.
And this is why, after several months of working on it, I’m about to put a book into the world.
“From Patient to Advocate: Turning Survivorship Into Impact” launches March 1st.
I wrote it for everyone who’s been through something hard and felt that quiet pull toward doing something about it. The people who sit in waiting rooms thinking “this could be better.” The survivors who’ve been told “you’re so inspiring” but have no idea what to do with that. The caregivers who’ve watched someone suffer and thought “never again—not if I can help it.”
I wrote it for Liz. For Steven. For Jose. For every person we’ve lost who deserved to see the change they fought for.
And I wrote it for you—the person reading this who hasn’t started yet but knows, deep down, that you want to.
If you’re in the Tampa Bay area, I’d love to see you in person.
I’m hosting a book launch celebration on March 12th in Clearwater—an evening of conversation, community, and yes, books. We’ll have time to talk, connect with fellow advocates, and celebrate together.
Because this work is too heavy to carry alone, and too important not to celebrate.
For those of you who joined my email list:
Thank you. Truly.
You’ve already received the first two chapters of the book. In the coming weeks, you’ll also receive a free 21-page companion workbook—practical exercises and templates to help you start your own advocacy journey.
If you haven’t signed up yet, you can do that here:
I miss Liz. I miss Steven. I miss Jose.
I’ll keep missing them.
But the best thing I know how to do with that grief is keep going—keep writing, keep talking, keep showing up for this community the way they showed up for all of us.
Thank you for being here.
Tim
Tim McDonald is a healthcare advocate, author, and host of the Advocacy at Work podcast. “From Patient to Advocate: Turning Survivorship Into Impact” launches March 1, 2026.
Book launch party - March 12, Clearwater → RSVP
Join the email list → link
Listen to my conversation with Liz Healy → podcast link
Tim, I'm so sorry for the loss of your friends. Thank you for sharing this.