The Disabled CEO
Life beyond the stroke
You ran things before.
You intend to again.
Most stroke recovery is built for a quieter life. This is for people who do not want one, and for the employers trying to bring them back.
I had a stroke
You were driven before this happened. You still are. Here is what nobody in rehab quite tells you about getting back to the work you love, and how to do it without wrecking the recovery.
Start hereSomeone I work with had a stroke
A colleague, often a senior one, is coming back. You want to do it well and you are worried about getting it wrong. Here is what actually helps, and the mistakes well-meaning people make.
Start here"The rehab goals I was given were set at a bar I used to clear before breakfast. Nobody could tell me how to get back to the work I loved. So I am building what I could not find." Michael Maher, founder
You wanted your old life back. That is not denial.
You built a career on drive. A stroke hands you a recovery plan built for someone whose ambitions are nothing like yours — and quietly asks you to become that person. This is for the people who will not.
"Take it easy" is not advice. It is an instruction to become someone else.
The rehab bar is set for daily life — dressing, cooking, a gentle return to routine. Right for most people; maybe not for you. And the hardest part is invisible: cognitive fatigue that arrives without warning, after you have looked fine for an hour.
- Pace to recover, not to disappear.
- Be honest with your clinicians — don't manage their impression of you.
- Measure progress in months, not mornings.
- Keep one person you can tell the truth to about still wanting it all.
A colleague had a stroke. Here is how to do this well.
A senior colleague is coming back and you want to get it right. Short and practical on purpose — no platitudes, just what helps. If they look well and speak normally, your instinct is to assume they're recovered. Resist it: physical and cognitive recovery run on different clocks.
Looking fine is not the same as being fine. Plan for the gap.
The five mistakes well-meaning employers make
- Framing the return as a favour — treat it as a valued colleague returning, not charity.
- Removing responsibility to be kind — adjust the load, not the ambition.
- Assuming visible recovery means cognitive recovery — the costliest error.
- Treating fatigue as a motivation problem — it is neurological, not attitudinal.
- Waiting for them to ask — high performers rarely do. Build the check-ins in.
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