186: The Good Listening To Show with Chris Grimes - Episode 186186: The Good Listening To Show with Chris Grimes - Episode 186
UK Health Radio Podcast
Sue Garrett talks with host Chris Grimes about her nursing career, caring for her husband with dementia, sailing, and creating elaborate cakes for her growing family. The conversation focuses on legacy, resilience and finding small joys amid challenging health and family situations.
43:10•19 Sept 2026
Legacy Life Reflections with Nurse, Carer and Cake-Maker Sue Garrett
Episode Overview
- Personal history can be captured as a legacy gift, offering loved ones a structured way to tell their story.
- Caring for someone with dementia demands acceptance that the condition does not improve and safety may require outside support.
- Sailing, hobbies and creative pursuits such as cake-making can become vital emotional lifelines during times of crisis.
- Maintaining a "happy place" – like a garden with books and music – helps balance the strain of long-term caring responsibilities.
- It is possible to adjust your course in life, even when circumstances stay the same, by changing how you respond to them.
“"You can't change the direction of the wind, but you can alter the direction of your sails."”
How do people find strength in their journey to sobriety and wider wellbeing? This instalment of The Good Listening To Show on UK Health Radio focuses on "Legacy Life Reflections" with guest Sue Garrett, offering a warm, gently funny and very human conversation about ageing, family, nursing and caring through dementia. Hosted by Chris Grimes, the chat feels more like a relaxed afternoon in Sue’s garden – her favourite "happy place" – than a formal interview.
You’ll hear about her long career as a nurse, her "fierce love for family", and the impact of her husband Andy’s frontotemporal parietal dementia. Sue talks honestly about guilt, the limits of caring at home, and the emotional strain of placing Andy in a care home, saying that nurses are trained to "take your emotion home" but dementia refuses to fit that rule. There’s plenty of lightness too.
Sue shares how sailing became her "actual saviour" after a painful divorce, turning trips to a Thamesmead scouting lake into a deep passion that later bonded her with son Phil. She jokes about washing boats by capsizing them and laughs about building birthday cakes out of Haribo and M&M’s for grandchildren who "don’t like cake". Her next project is an 80th birthday cake shaped like a cricket bat for Andy – chocolate, white icing, and a painstakingly iced red ball.
The episode is aimed at anyone interested in real-life stories around health, dementia, family, resilience and legacy. With music, baking, travel, and a global gaggle of grandchildren woven through Sue’s reflections, it offers companionship to those juggling care responsibilities, complex family histories and their own sense of self.
As Sue puts it, "you can't change the direction of the wind, but you can alter the direction of your sails" – a fitting thought for anyone reassessing their path in sobriety, caregiving, or later life. What changes to your own "sails" might you be ready to make?
Do you want to link to this podcast?
Get the buttons here!
More From This Show
The latest episodes from the same podcast.