Carole Pyke lives without conscious access to her life before 2019. In this interview, the founder of Words That Deliver discusses identity, the expertise she can still draw on, and what people miss when they see only her smile.
In 2019, Carole went to deliver a six-hour marketing workshop without consciously remembering the material or how she had learned it. The booking, at Portobello Business Centre, predated her second stroke. She wanted to find out whether she could do it.
Getting there was already significant. It was the furthest she had travelled alone on public transport since the stroke, she recalls. What happened once she arrived surprised her: the knowledge was available, and so was her ability to keep the room engaged.
“I had access to knowledge and skills I didn’t know existed and couldn't consciously remember acquiring, yet there I was, using them.”
Carole, the founder and CEO of Words That Deliver, says she has two marketing degrees and no conscious memory of studying for either. That distinction runs through her answers to my questions. Losing access to the experience of learning something has not meant losing everything she learned. Nor does she equate memory loss with losing her identity.
She is also quick to question the boundaries of an interview that might make memory loss the explanation for her entire life.
Asked for an everyday task that shows its effects, she challenges the premise: “That's an interesting question because it assumes I can isolate memory loss from the other disabilities I live with. I can't.”
She has a question of her own.
“Perhaps the bigger question is why we're focusing exclusively on memory loss when that is only one aspect of my experience.”
A past other people remember
Carole dates her strokes to January 2014 and February 2019. She describes living with retrograde amnesia and having no conscious access to her lived experiences before 2019. Most of the disabilities she lives with are invisible. She asks that they not be described as something she has overcome.
Her preferred wording matters: she speaks of the disabilities, rather than making them part of her identity. They affect how she moves through each day. They do not, in her account, define who she is.
Other people sometimes try to reconnect her with a past they remember. One friend has repeatedly told her stories about things she did, still excited by what she witnessed. Carole has no conscious connection to those events, so she asks her friend to stop.
Photographs can be unsettling too. She describes receiving pictures of herself in situations she cannot remember, looking at a person she does not recognise as herself.
There are other ways of knowing something about the past. Her mother died more than 30 years ago, she says. In 2021, she found a recording in which her mother introduced herself and told her she loved her. Carole cannot remember their time together. She has heard her mother's love in her mother's own voice.
Discovering her preferences now means living, trying things and noticing what feels right. She describes an appetite for ideas and an enjoyment of people. Faith is part of her everyday life; she calls Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit and God JC, H and Papa G her three besties.
“Life is the greatest gift I've been given, and my thank you card is what I do with it.”
She also gives herself time. Her phrase for it is the pace of grace: nothing rushed, nothing hurried, with room to navigate the day in a way that works for her.
When knowing is not enough
At a party, Carole recalls, someone approached and said hello. She could not recognise them. She asked who they were and how they knew her, explaining her memory loss and face blindness.
The person said they knew, laughed and walked away. Carole says she cried.
“I had explained exactly what I needed, but I wasn't heard.”
The request had been specific. A name and an explanation of how they knew each other would have helped her take part in the conversation. Awareness of her disabilities had not produced that response.
At work, she describes a different experience. Katie and Laura, her Words That Deliver team, listen before trying to solve a problem. They help her work out the missing steps and find ways to reach the result she wants. She does not require them to understand every aspect of what she experiences.
“Useful support looks like being heard, having my choices respected and getting the support I need to find my way without the person being rigid that their way is the way.”
She describes her thinking as a Mac operating system in a PC world. Trying to make someone else's programmes fit doesn’t work.
Making room for how she thinks
The workshop gave Carole evidence that she could use expertise without remembering its acquisition. Her work now also involves recognising where she needs help.
“I think in pictures, stories and outcomes. I can see what I want to achieve, but I don't automatically see all the steps needed to get there.”
Her team helps bridge that gap. She also uses AI to explore ideas, organise information and identify steps between something she can picture and something she can do. She has shaped the work around how she thinks, rather than requiring herself to follow a conventional process.
That experience informs the way she describes her work with other people. At Words That Deliver, she helps people recognise their identity and the value they bring. She wants them to make that discovery for themselves, rather than have her supply an answer.
Recognising herself remains an ongoing experience. Carole recalls not recognising her reflection in hospital in 2019. More recently, she says, eye surgery changed some of her features, and she found it difficult to look in the mirror again.
Her understanding of herself has changed since that earlier encounter.
“I know who I am, even if I don't recognise the woman in the mirror.”
What a smile leaves out
Carole knows that people can find her story inspiring. She recognises resilience in it herself. What troubles her is how much disappears when that becomes the complete account.
“I don't wear a mask. I'm fully me all the time. It's how I came to understand the word paradox. I can be full of joy, energy and enthusiasm for life while navigating significant challenges every day. Both are equally real.”
She recalls someone from a stroke group suggesting that people would struggle to understand because she smiles, inspires others and does things. But her enjoyment of life does not make the effort involved in participating any less real.
Carole places considerable value on choosing how she responds to circumstances she did not choose. In her account, showing up fully can include tears.
Her request to readers is practical: hear someone out when they describe a difficulty. Resist responding with a similar experience before they have finished. Do not assume the solution you would choose is the one they need.
“They may simply need a listening ear.”
This interview was conducted in writing.
Responses have been selected and arranged thematically, with paraphrase used for context. Direct quotations retain Carole's wording.
