You’re wise to be planning for your retirement. But the best-laid plans can be turned upside down in an instant. Sarah Cart joins us to share her experience and her new book On My Way Back to You: One Couple’s Journey through Catastrophic Illness to Healing and Hope.

Sarah Cart joins us from Massachusetts.

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Sarah Cart was raised and educated in New York and New England. As a freelancer, she wrote for multiple local publications while she and her husband, Ben, raised four sons in northeastern Ohio. Upon becoming empty nesters, the two moved to the Florida Keys, but they returned every summer to the Pennsylvania Poconos, where each had lifelong family connections. Then came Covid. The pandemic, combined with Ben’s health issues, necessitated their sheltering in place in Florida for the entirety of 2020. In the wake of Ben’s undergoing miraculous lifesaving measures, they have been afforded the unanticipated gift of a future and, more than ever before, relish time spent with family and friends.

Sarah Cart’s On My Way Back to You is a first-hand account of the rollercoaster world of lifesaving transplants and the unimaginable challenges Sarah faced as she struggled to manage her husband’s devastating illness and to save his life, their marriage, and her sanity.

Throughout her 42-year marriage, writer Sarah Cart has enjoyed a life of “gloriously controlled chaos,” as she and her husband, Ben, a successful entrepreneur and seasoned outdoorsman, embarked on numerous adventures with their four active sons. Then the unthinkable happened.

In suspenseful and heartrending detail, Cart shares how Ben developed an incurable autoimmune condition that was manageable and under control one minute and threatened to kill him the next, landing him in the ICU as the Covid pandemic closed the world down. Thrust into the role of nurse and caregiver, Sarah joined the ranks of 39 million Americans who champion and care for an ailing loved one.

In addition to confronting doubts, fears, and endless setbacks, aggravations, and red tape, she also had to consent to daunting procedures on Ben’s behalf. Too, there were the months-long Covid-era restrictions on hospital visitations and the post-surgery snafus with home healthcare personnel. Thank goodness for the heartfelt communiques with family and friends, all of which reflect the faith, fortitude, grit, and grace that sustained her.

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For More on Sarah Cart

On My Way Back to You: One Couple’s Journey through Catastrophic Illness to Healing and Hope

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Podcast Episodes You May Like

Ride or Die – Jarie Bolander

The Self-Healing Mind – Gregory Scott Brown, M.D.

Planning for Family Caregiving – Danielle Miura, CFP

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Wise Quotes

On Perfection vs. Good Enough

“Perfection is not always a good thing. I never perfected being a perfectionist, but I like to know that things are done well and right and the way they’re supposed to be and the very sobering idea that if we had known before Ben went into the hospital that he had a broken hip, which is the kind of thing I mean, I was his caregiver, how could I not know that? That’s unforgivable. But if we’d known it, he wouldn’t have been a candidate for transplant. That just blows my mind. Not all the examples are that huge, but well, another one is he probably wouldn’t have been a candidate for transplant if it hadn’t been the COVID pandemic.”

On Gratitude

“Over the course of Ben’s being in the hospital, I had taken to sending emails to family and friends on a regular basis to keep everybody on the same page. And I had all those emails, and in the beginning, every single one of them was a part of the original outline of the book, just because they told the story, and all I really needed to do was kind of link them together. But then people pointed out that I needed to tell a little bit more of the story at the beginning and a little bit more of the story at the end. And it just, it was a way for me to figure out where we’d been and to realize, I mean, I think I was pretty grateful every step of the way, but to realize the magnitude of gratitude that was appropriate for where we ended up.”

On Caregiving

“And so my advice would be, be kind to yourself, be forgiving of yourself, you’re not going to get this right. There’s not an answer sheet for that. this, and you’re not going to get graded. You’re going to get through it. What I used to tell people, a year ago, I would say, Oh, you’re stronger than you think. And I believe that, but I think the more helpful thing is to say: You’re going to get through this – because that doesn’t put the pressure on Oh, I have to be strong. You don’t have to be strong, you just need to put one step in one foot in front of the other and move forward if you can, sideways if you have to, backwards if you get pushed. But just keep trying. Break it down into manageable pieces. And if the pieces that you’ve broken it down into don’t feel manageable, pick them up one at a time and break them down to something smaller. It sounds so much easier than it might feel in the moment.”

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About Retirement Wisdom

I help people who are retiring, but aren’t quite done yet, discover what’s next and build their custom version of their next life. A meaningful retirement doesn’t just happen by accident.

Schedule a call today to discuss how The Designing Your Life process created by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans can help you make your life in retirement a great one – on your own terms.

About Your Podcast Host 

Joe Casey is an executive coach who also helps people design their next life after their primary career and create their version of The Multipurpose Retirement.™ He created his own next chapter after a twenty-six-year career at Merrill Lynch, where he was Senior Vice President and Head of HR for Global Markets & Investment Banking. Today, in addition to his work with clients, Joe hosts The Retirement Wisdom Podcast, which thanks to his guests and loyal listeners, ranks in the top 1 % globally in popularity by Listen Notes, with over 1.2 million downloads. Business Insider has recognized Joe as one of 23 innovative coaches who are making a difference. He’s the author of Win the Retirement Game: How to Outsmart the 9 Forces Trying to Steal Your Joy.