Resilience And Optimism Following A Life-Changing Accident, With Sarah de Lagarde

Life’s challenges may knock us down, but with resilience and optimism, we can rise to conquer any mountain that stands in our way. In this episode, we sit down with Sarah de Lagarde, the Global Head of Communications at Janus Henderson Investors, to hear her remarkable journey of resilience and optimism after a life-changing accident. At the peak of her career and juggling motherhood, Sarah’s life took an unexpected turn when she was involved in a horrific train accident. The accident left her with severe injuries, including two crushed limbs, a broken nose, and broken teeth. Despite the odds stacked against her, she shares how she managed to find strength within herself and the support of her community, leading to an astonishing recovery. As we delve deeper, Sarah touches upon the importance of storytelling and how sharing her journey has been a source of healing and empowerment for herself and others. She reveals how she found solace in the great outdoors, scaling heights like Kilimanjaro, defying expectations, and proving to herself that she is capable of achieving the extraordinary. Join us and learn how to conquer your own mountains and seize every moment!

Check out the full series of “Career Sessions, Career Lessons” podcasts here or visit pathwise.io/podcast/.

Watch the episode here

Listen to the podcast here

Resilience And Optimism Following A Life-Changing Accident, With Sarah de Lagarde

Global Head Of Communications At Janus Henderson Investors

I’m honored to be joined by my friend and Janus Henderson’s colleague Sarah de Lagarde. She is a remarkable example of resilience in the face of tragedy. Her life was firing on all cylinders. Last fall, she experienced a life-changing accident. Initially, she fought for her very life, but very quickly thereafter, she was making peace with the fact that her future was going to be different. She was looking forward and she was doing so with incredible optimism. Her story is an amazing one and I’m privileged to have her join me today to tell it. Sarah, welcome. Thanks for being here.

Thank you so much for that kind introduction. It’s an honor to be here. I hope that I can enlighten you with some of the insights I had since my fall.

Give the audience a little bit of introduction, your background, what you were doing for our company before the accident, and what happened.

I have had a long-standing career in communications for over twenty years now. It’s something that perhaps at a time I thought happened by accident. I had a job. My first job was in comms. My love for it developed over time. In hindsight, I look at it and I thought I was always destined to work in comms. It’s something that I thoroughly enjoy. It’s a high-octane difficult job where you never know what is going to happen on that day. You would come to work with a plan and five minutes later, the whole plan would be upside down. You would have to think on your feet and be creative in finding solutions. That type of job excites me. I made it my career.

You were heading communications for our company, and then you had a terrible thing happen to you on the way home from work one night.

I am the global head of comms at Janus Henderson. In September 2022, I was in a very good place work-wise. I was very happy with the work and agenda that we had. I was very happy in my personal life as well. I had literally climbed Kilimanjaro in August 2022 with my husband. It was a dream ten years in the making. It was to celebrate both our 40th birthdays. We managed successfully to do that, then one month later, I was at work on a Friday night. I stayed a little bit longer than usual. I was working on a project. I wanted to make sure that everything was sorted and dealt with. I was on my way home. I made the split-second decision that waiting for a cab was going to take too long.

It was raining. I had been waiting for some time. That split-second decision was to take the tube. On my way home, I remember thinking I was quite tired. I had just recovered from COVID. I remember allowing myself to close my eyes for two seconds, just a tiny rest. I woke up at the end of the line. I remember being a bit panicked, thinking, “This is not supposed to be the place I’m supposed to exit the tube,” but I did anyway. I looked around and realized it was the wrong station. I realized I had to get back onto the same train to go back to London. I remember water on the platform. I slipped and tripped. I crashed into the train carriage.

I broke my nose and my front teeth. I had a cut under my chin, and I fell in between the platform and the train onto the railway track. Nobody saw me, the train parted and took my right arm above the elbow with it. I remained on the track for about fifteen minutes, calling out for help. Nobody saw me. Nobody heard me. The second train came into the station, and I believe that’s the one that claimed my leg. My memory was a bit patchy at that point because I was conscious, but I was slipping in and out of consciousness. It was a truly life-changing event.

You were bleeding profusely. You almost died before you even were rescued from underneath that second train.

I’ve heard it quite a few times from the paramedics and the trauma doctors who were on call that night. They said I am a miracle. I should have died ten times that night. There were so many different moments that could have gone terribly wrong, yet I refused to give up. As a matter of fact, I remember thinking, “I just climbed Kilimanjaro. I am not going to die at a train station in London that hasn’t even got a cool name. It’s not even the Central London station. It’s way out in zone five. This is not a good way to die.” I remember feeling angry about it saying, “It’s not supposed to happen. I am meant to go home and be with my children.” I could see their little faces in my mind’s eye. I said, “This is not going to happen.”

You went by air ambulance to one of the trauma centers in London.

I was very lucky that night. The air ambulance was on-call to attend to someone else. I was lucky that they were still free. They came over to the site of the accident as soon as possible. They spoke to me. They made sure that I remained conscious, and they extracted me from underneath the train. The beauty of the air ambulance is that they are not just patient transport. They treat people on site.

Sarah de Lagarde: The beauty of the air ambulance is that they’re not just the patient transport, they actually treat people on site.

In their setup, they’ve got everything they need to attend to a patient who’s in a very bad way. They were able to put me on a stretcher and scan my body for injuries. They stopped the bleeding. They gave me strong pain relief. They put the tourniquet on so I didn’t bleed out, then they were able to transport me back to the Royal London Hospital, where I went straight into surgery.

This is very late on Friday night at that point. What were you doing on Sunday morning?

I remember vaguely what happened on Sunday morning. I woke up from the second round of surgeries. The only thought that was in my mind was to think, “On Monday, I won’t be able to go to work. I need to ensure a seamless handover.” I work in communications, but I’m very used to managing change and crises.

My brain instantly went into crisis management mode. I was like, “If I can’t go to work on Monday, I need to ensure a seamless transition to my deputy that had to carry it out.” I called my deputy and told him very matter-of-factly, “This is what happened. I got run over by two trains. I’m still alive. I won’t be able to make it to work on Monday. Here’s the handover for the project that we were working on. Can you please check pages 2 and 14 because there are some outstanding issues to solve?”

It was strange that I went into that mode. There was no panic. It was just an acceptance of what had happened and that I no longer was playing the main role in this comms setup. For me, it was very much like being in the military. Whereas if one unit is down, you hand it over. The ultimate goal is for the whole project to still be successful rather than fail because of one person.

For the audience, it is not something that you would normally do when you’re facing the life-changing accident that Sarah did. It’s probably a lesson of what not to do. You were very quickly looking forward.

To be honest, that has always been my character. I rarely am nostalgic for the past. I don’t look back and go, “It was so much better in those days.” I don’t have many regrets in my life. I can think of one apart from making that decision to take the tube that night. Aside from that, I do have a tendency to look forward. I am a broad thinker. I think very much about the future state. I love innovation and new developments and thinking creatively about problems, but I don’t dwell on the past. I believe very much that this is saving me today.

Being able to assess the situation and say, “This is going to be my future state. My limbs aren’t going to grow back.” There is no point in dwelling on the past and looking at pictures of me a year ago with four limbs, and feeling regretful of it. I’m just like, “I’ve got a new set of challenges now. How do I make the most of this and look forward?”

It is a huge life setback. One of the things that I certainly talk to people about from a career perspective is that you’re going to have setbacks. Some will seem serious at the moment, and then you’ll look back and say, “That wasn’t all that bad.” There are others that will be legitimately bad, and they take time to get over, but you’ve got to learn how to recover from those situations. Had you ever faced anything from a career or a life perspective remotely resembling what you were facing at that point? How did you learn how to recover from this?

Every decision that I’ve made in the past, career-wise, has always been one of making the best of a bad or good situation. We could label it mistakes but it’s more like I wasn’t sure of my direction. I wasn’t sure what my calling was. I know this sounds a little bit esoteric, but we are all good and passionate about something. When we grow into adulthood and into our careers, we don’t necessarily always see that. There is a lot of influence from our peers and parental expectations that drive us down one road that we think, “That’s the one that I should pursue”, when in fact, everything about your character or the way you deal with corporate life funnels you into a different direction.

I made some wrong turns a couple of times in my career where I thought, “This is what I’m meant to be doing,” when in fact, it was completely the wrong environment for me. I was in the early career decisions that I made. I was put forward for a trader role in an investment bank. I had the education and the languages. I had a sales personality. On paper, it looked good, but when I started working in that environment, I decided that it was so wrong.

You know when you are on the wrong path. You wake up in the morning and it doesn’t feel right. You feel stressed, and there’s this tight pull inside your chest. You’re like, “I can’t face this day.” That’s your sign that you’re on the wrong path. I didn’t last because I was the wrong person for the job. We parted ways amicably. That was one direction that I tried to pursue that didn’t work out.

Learning how to deal with that is something that we all need to do. Nobody should ever happen to them what happened to you. One story I remember you telling, you mentioned that you had broken your tooth when you hit the train after you slipped. You were lying in the hospital thinking, “People are going to come and visit me. I need to look good.” You managed to get a dentist to come visit you in the hospital, which is an amazing feat.

I think very efficiently. I look at a process and I think, “That’s slow. That’s convoluted. Simplification needs to happen.” I remember being in the trauma ward at the Royal London Hospital. It’s not just that I wanted to look good for my visitors but it was also very painful because the nerves were exposed. I couldn’t eat properly. I remember that I first mentioned it to the doctors. I said, “I need to have this fixed because it’s painful and it prevents me from eating.” They said, “You would have to go to the building fifteen minutes down the road because they have the dentist and we have no dentists here.” I said, “I can’t get out of bed because I had these two amputations and I’m not mobile.”

I could see that they were thinking about the problem. They came back and said, “It’s impossible.” I said, “If I can’t go to the dentist, is it possible for the dentist to come over here?” They said, “Nobody has ever asked that. Nobody has ever done this before, but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong. Can you just ask? It might be possible.” Lo and behold, somebody came back and say, “We can totally do that.”

I had one dentist and an assistant come over. They fixed my tooth and I was able to eat. The argument was you are in this trauma ward you are in a state where you can leave this hospital bed to make room for somebody else who needs it. My argument was to say, “If you fix my teeth, then I will be able to eat. I will be able to recover quickly, and then I will be able to leave, and that bed will be free.” That’s the moment when they decided, “I guess this makes sense.”

There’s a lesson there and helping people to understand what was in it for them in your own way. I know you drew a lot of energy from your husband, kids, and friends during that time. How did that help you get the energy you needed to accelerate your recovery?

It had a lot to do. I’m nine months into my recovery. Even today, the doctors that I’m seeing still comment on the fact that I am probably eighteen months ahead of schedule of their average patient. They look at me sometimes like it shouldn’t be possible, yet I’m here. I do think a lot about what it is that made me recover quickly. Part of it is probably luck and perhaps genetics or the fact that I was physically in good shape because of climbing Kilimanjaro before. I think the main part is that I had so much support from the people around me. I was very emotional in the two first months specifically because there is such an outpouring of love from everyone around me

I was crying every single day because these incredible messages would come in, offering help. It came from my close family, my extended family, and my colleagues at work. They were absolutely incredible. This collaborative community helped me and helps me to this day to see a positive because it’s easy when something life-changing happens. In a space of a night, I became severely disabled.

For somebody who was able-bodied and enjoys sports and the outdoors, to all of a sudden, you’re locked in a wheelchair and two limbs are missing, it is hugely traumatizing. Let’s not underestimate that. I know I’m smiling and laughing, but that’s 80% of me. There’s 20% of me that is sometimes impacted by this. It is the people around me who are giving me this psychological safety to be able to express my feelings and feel safe that I can reclaim parts of myself. That’s at work, as well as at home.

You made a commitment to your girls that you were going to be home for Christmas.

That is true. That was in October. I remember having my eight-year-old on the phone, and she was in tears. I asked her, “What’s the matter?” She said, “I think that you’re going to stay in the hospital forever. You’re never going to come home.” That hit me. I thought it was not just about me. It’s about the people who are close to me, my husband, and my two daughters. They’re only 8 and 12. For them, it was a huge thing. I decided right there and then that I was going to come home as soon as possible to be with them, and to reassure them that Mommy is fine. This horrible thing happened, but I can bounce back from this and I can be there for them.

Bear in mind, this was October. I said, “I’ll be home for Christmas.” From that moment onwards, I was in rehab and was working so hard. I was the first one to go for physio. I was like, “Add another weight to this. I need to build my muscles again.” I learned to walk. It was hard because walking with a prosthesis is completely different from walking with your two legs. I was determined and was released on the 2nd of December. I had a full three weeks to prepare for Christmas, and it was the best Christmas of our entire lives.

Certainly, life was in a different perspective then. The fact that you were able to beat your goal by weeks is amazing. You set your sight on getting a very high-tech prosthetic arm. You and your husband started a fundraising effort. How did that play out? Talk a little bit about that.

It was a great idea from my husband. We were evaluating my options post-surgery of how life without a right arm and right leg would play out. We had options on the NHS or National Health System here, and they were good options, but the timeline was very long. In order to qualify for a prosthetic arm called the bioelectric system, which mimics the movement of a normal arm, it would take years. You have to first heal for a year, then you would have to try a training arm for a year, and then maybe the third year you would get an electric arm. I’m slightly impatient, to say the least, and also a bit stubborn.

We talked about like, “What are our options if we go to the private sector?” We did have a look around. We spoke to a few people who had privately funded high-tech bionic arms. The feedback was good. It had a very hefty price tag attached to it. My husband said, “Why don’t we do a GoFundMe fundraiser and see what happens?” I remember he set the price at £250,000 because that was what the result of the interviews was.

It’s quite expensive. I remember telling my husband, “There is no way that we will collect that amount of money.” I thought we get £10,000 if we’re lucky. We launched it, and the story snowballed and everybody talked to each other about it. It became this big thing. Within two and a half weeks, we reached a target and more. I couldn’t believe it. On the day that I left the rehabilitation clinic, I walked out of the door and I was £250,000 richer, which meant I could afford a bionic arm.

I remember at the time, it took off. We have 2,200 people in our company. I think 2,200 people were constantly refreshing your GoFundMe page because the money was flowing in so quickly. It was incredible. It was very impressive.

The reason why was it touched people. I remember posting a notification on LinkedIn. It was originally meant to say, “It was a reflection on how life can be cruel. One day you’re up here and the next day you’re hitting rock bottom.” It was saying a message about we are much stronger than we think we are. In a way, it was to tell my small network that I was going to be out of service for a few months. The reaction to that post was incredible. It took off. It became viral quite quickly. It was at the weekend, and loads of people messaged me on WhatsApp saying, “Have you seen your LinkedIn?”

I was like, “No, I haven’t checked.” They said, “Go and have a look. It’s incredible.” I went on there. We are close to 65,000 reactions, 1,000 shares, and then 3,000 comments. I don’t think I’ve gotten to the bottom of all of the comments. At some point, it was like I need to stop. It told me that the story struck a nerve in saying bad things happened to good people. It was such a mundane accident that could have happened to any commuter. The fact that I have a job, I’m engaged in my communities, and I’m also a mom to two kids, people felt this incredible injustice and could somehow relate to it. Yet were impressed by the fact that somehow I managed to find the strength to survive.

It is an amazing story. It went viral. It helped contribute to your fundraising. People from all over the world saw that story. It was an inspiration to a lot of people. You say 65,000 likes. That’s just the likes, but if you think about all the people who saw it and didn’t react in some way that you can measure, it’s pretty incredible. You came back to work in a limited capacity far. Talk a little bit about how that’s been, where you are, and how your bionic arm training is going.

I couldn’t stay away from work for too long. I knew that I love my job. I love the people that I work with. My worst nightmare was to be alone and not add value to society or to the company that I work for. That is my worst nightmare. For me, it was important for my recovery to ask whether I could come back to work, but not in a full capacity because I had way too much going on personally about the meetings that I had to go to and the clinical appointments I had to go to.

We find a happy medium to say, I could go to work for 2 days and then leave 3 days for medical appointments. It is to the credit of my manager and the leadership team in my company. This is pretty unprecedented. It’s not something that happens very often, and yet there was such a degree of understanding and flexibility that I was able to come back four months after the accident happened. I remember that my doctors and occupational therapist said, “You can’t do that. People don’t go back to work that soon. It normally takes 2 or 3 years. Why don’t you take that time off and use it to rebuild yourself?”

I said, “You don’t understand. Work is such a big part of me.” I knew it when my kids were in floods of tears saying, “Does that mean you’re never going to work again as if that was the most important thing?” I told them, “I’m okay. Don’t worry. I’ll go back to work.” They are like, “That means mom is okay.” I would love to come back in a full-time capacity. I’m waiting for the final pieces of my rehabilitation to fall into place, then I would love to come back.

You are working on training a version of a bionic arm right now.

I have had first a cosmetic arm, which is very “creepy looking,” to quote my children. It looks like an extra device that you would use in a horror movie. It looks like an arm, but it’s made of silicon. It even has fingers with fingernails. I find it unhelpful. It’s not necessarily very aesthetic either, but that’s the first stage. You wear it because it gives you balance. It gets your remaining limb used to have something attached to it. The second iteration of that is what they call a mechanical arm. That’s a little bit more robotic looking. It’s got valves and wires. It’s body powered. You shrug your arms and you can make four basic movements like open and close of a grip.

It’s not a hand. It’s a hook device. You can bend your elbow, extend and bend. It has limited functionality. It’s more about balance and weight bearing. The next step from that is the bionic arm. That is incredible. It is science fiction come true. It is the future. I wish I had it here, but it’s not ready. There’s a small piece of the wrist that is missing and it’s a key component. It’s not lost. I hope it’s delayed in transit.

Probably caught up in customs someplace.

The science behind it is incredible. Bear in mind that I had no idea about prosthetics or how it could affect civilians. I had a notion of it for soldiers returning from war that might have a need for them, but I didn’t think about it in a civilian capacity until it happened. The technology is quite extraordinary.

You’ve been speaking a lot lately. One of the reasons that I wanted to do this was there are some lessons that you’ve taken away. The fact that you’ve already thought about that and are speaking on that is amazing in and of itself. Talk about some of the things that you’ve taken away and the lessons that you’ve learned that you’re putting back into all aspects of your life from what happened and how you dealt with it.

I spoke to a few audiences since. That’s part of my character. Some people deal with trauma slightly differently. They keep the trauma to themselves and work through it. That’s not how I deal with it because I’m this extroverted person who has been conditioned throughout all of my life to story tell. This is the biggest story that has ever happened to me. It felt natural to work through it while I’m talking to people.

The more I tell the story, the less scary it becomes and the more acceptance I have. I noticed that when I tell this story, people tend to react quite positively to it, and they take something away for themselves. I love to encourage that. The scariest talk I’ve done far is to speak at my daughter’s school. I spoke to about 100 pupils from the age of 3 to 11. I was nervous. My daughter was in the audience. I was worried, “I’m going to shock them. I’m going to traumatize them with my story.” To be honest, I shouldn’t have worried because they were on it with questions like, “Why did you not bleed out on the tracks?” Kids have no filter. In the end, they were interested in the gory details.

We’ve desensitized our children, but that’s a topic for another day.

I spoke to our clients at work and at industry events. The reaction of people was very positive. The things that I talk about are not necessarily the accident, although there is a bit in there that says, “No matter how well prepared you are or how careful you are, life can change within a split second. You make that decision and then it unleashes a series of unfortunate events that lead to this tragedy, but you can’t plan for that.” If we put that to one side and focus on what I’m reassured by, which is the strength that we have. I talk about it as a hysterical strength. That is the strength that we display when we are put in a life-threatening situation.

It is about how everything in your body comes together to save you. There are urban myths out there about the mom who lifts a car single-handedly and then retrieves the toddler from underneath it. I’ve heard that story many times, and now I believe it because I felt it. There is this super strong desire to survive. I felt no pain, although I had two crushed limbs, a broken nose and teeth, etc. I was severely injured and yet I felt no pain.

I remember putting myself in an energy-saving mode where I thought, “I can’t panic. I can’t waste energy. My sole focus is getting out of here so I can go home to my children.” It affected the way I was breathing. I slowed down my breathing and my heartbeat, which meant I didn’t bleed out and that I had enough energy for the long run rather than panicking and thrashing about, and therefore losing the energy. That was one thing.

I still have it today but now, I have a limited number of steps a day that I can go through. I’ve got energy batteries for myself that last twelve hours and after that, I get tired. I’m very intentional about how I use my energy to say, “Do I need to do this or is it a waste of time and energy?” I probably would’ve not done that before. That’s quite important to know how to do that because, in our day-to-day, we do spend way too much time worrying about things that don’t deserve our focus and our energy. That’s probably the first lesson that I learned straight after the accident. It’s to remember and think, “How I survived is I went in that energy-saving mode.”

Other lessons. I’m sure there are others.

The other one was about how important collaborative communities are. I mentioned that earlier, but that is about being a nice person. I’ve always been authentic and I’m nice to everyone regardless of position or politics. I am genuinely a nice person. That played a part in me getting so much support. I’m sure that if I had been the mean person, maybe people wouldn’t have reacted like that. I would probably would’ve not received that as much support. Nurturing your networks and being a nice person with good values saves you as well. When you’re in trouble, that’s when people will show up.

Sarah de Lagarde: Nurturing your networks and being a nice person with good values saves you. When you’re in trouble, that’s when people will show up.

You’ve talked about wanting to get back maybe to something resembling more full-time. You’ve got an arm to train and learn how to use in your daily life. What else is next for you?

I love the outdoors. You know that. We talked about that at length. Climbing Kilimanjaro was probably the most exciting thing I’ve done apart from having children and getting married. It was specifically exciting because I genuinely did think I was going to make it to the top. This is a true fact that we told friends and family that we were going to climb that mountain together with my husband. The reaction was always the same.

My husband is quite tall and sporty. People would say, “It’s going to be easy for you to run up that mountain. It’s going to be exciting,” then they would look at me and say, “Are you going as well?” I’ll say, “We’re going together.” They would say, “Are you sure? You don’t strike me as somebody.” I started this journey eight days climbing up that mountain. For me, it was never about getting to the top. Getting to the top was a bonus, but it was all about enjoying every single moment on that mountain from day one.

I remember getting to the first gate. I was excited. I high-fived everyone. The guide is looking at me saying, “There are many more to go. Why are you celebrating the first one?” I said, “I’m going to celebrate every single one because I’m not sure if I’m going to make it to the top.” Lo and behold, we got to base camp. I was feeling totally fine. I slept like a baby every night. I had no real symptoms of altitude issues. I was like, “We don’t have to go to the top, but we are at base camp, might as well try it.”

My husband was the one who struggled. He’s the one who nearly made it to the top because he was struggling with altitude. That moment when we got to the crater room and the sun rose, it was so incredible for me because it was an affirmation to say, “I underestimated my ability and my strength. Others did as well. I proved them wrong,” but it was more about proving it to myself because I felt I was not that strong. I was that strong, it turns out.

You’ve talked in a couple of different ways about not knowing what you’re capable of. You talked about it while you were lying there on the tracks and doing what you needed to do to survive. You’ve given the abbreviated version of your story. I’ve certainly heard much more of the detail. It was incredible the things that you did that night to survive. With your Kilimanjaro climb, you did it without knowing whether you’d make it to the top. You proved that you could. There are some professional athletes that have made that attempt and haven’t been able to make it to the top. Altitude can affect anybody even the most conditioned among people, but you proved it to yourself. You learn from those situations what you’re made of.

Six months after the accident, we went on our first trip outside of the UK where we live. We flew to a specific island in Portugal called Madeira. It’s very hilly. We picked the highest peak there, 1,862 meters. We decided, “Let’s give it a go. Let’s see how many steps I have in me.” I managed to get to the top. It was not that difficult of a walk. It was high up and beautiful. That was my first attempt to recover a little bit of that passion that I have.

A couple of weeks later, we were in the UK. We went to the Peak District, a place called Mam Tor. I managed a 4.5-hour hike and 18,000-plus steps which was huge for me. That was incredible. I thought, “This is great. I am on a trajectory to the top,” then I got knocked down because then all of a sudden, my prosthetic leg didn’t fit anymore. There were changes in the shape of my remaining limb. This is where I had to struggle with the setback because I thought I was going on a way up and things were getting better, and all of a sudden I was like, “Oh no.”

There are a couple of other things that didn’t work out. I could feel how hard it was to keep believing in a positive outcome because a setback is hard for anyone. You have your expectation. You think you’re going in one direction. You’re ticking off those boxes thinking, “I’m doing well,” then all of a sudden, something happens and you’re back at square one. It takes a lot to continue to believe that there is a positive outcome. The last lesson that I take away from this experience is that a positive mindset will help you through anything. It’s the belief that there is something better at the end of this story.

Sarah de Lagarde: A positive mindset will help you through anything. It’s the belief that there is something better at the end of this story.

It is incredibly powerful advice. It’s easy when you’re in one of those situations and you have that setback. You’d had the four-and-a-half-hour hike. It’s very easy to then believe that was just fleeting, then you have the problems, in your case, with your prosthetic, and you wonder whether you’ll ever get back there again. You have to have that faith that you will and ride out that period when you’re having to go through that setback, getting recast, and getting comfortable with the replacement and all of that. It’s a physical literal metaphor for the idea of how to power through those tough times.

It feels like it’s peaks and troughs that I’m seeing. A powerful metaphor in this is that climbing Kilimanjaro was the highest mountain that I’ve ever climbed until I hit rock bottom, and then I had an even bigger mountain to climb. I was battling with myself saying, “Can I get back to where I was?” Perhaps not exactly where I was before the accident, but, “How can I rebuild myself?” That is the biggest mountain. It’s beyond Everest.

Thank you for doing this. I appreciate your willingness, in general, and your candor. You’ve described a journey that nobody ever would want to go through, but you do it with such grace, poise, and optimism. That’s the thing that everybody saw in that video that went viral, and all of us who know you have experienced it. It’s an incredible inspiration. I hope that people who are tuning in to this particular episode will take away things that will help them not just in their careers but in their lives more generally. That was why I wanted to do this episode with you.

Thank you very much for inviting me along and allowing me to talk about this experience.

Thank you.

—

Sarah’s story is an amazing one. It was a privilege to have her on the show to share it. I hope that if you’ve made it this far, and tuned in all the way to the end, you took away something that will help you in your life, career, and whatever. We’ll leave it at that for this episode. Thank you and have a good rest of your day.

Important Links

• Sarah de Lagarde – LinkedIn
• LinkedIn – PathWise.io
• Twitter – PathWise.io
• Facebook – PathWise.io
• YouTube – PathWise.io

About Sarah de Lagarde

Sarah de Lagarde is the Global Head of Communications at Janus Henderson Investors, with 20+ years of broader industry experience in communications, PR, and crisis management.

On the night of September 30, 2022, she suffered a crisis of her own, experiencing life-changing injuries after falling into the gap between a London Tube train and the platform while commuting home from work. Her right arm and lower right leg were crushed by not one but two trains.

She should have died that evening, but she fought to stay alive, came to terms with her new reality, and very quickly started looking forward. The months since then have certainly not been easy for Sarah, but she has demonstrated remarkable optimism and resilience throughout her journey thus far as a double amputee. Her courage and grace is nothing short of inspirational.