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This article explores how healthy wives experience and deal with everyday life as spouses and carers of husbands with cerebral apoplexies. Three qualitative interviews were carried out. A phenomenological analysis inspired by van Manen reveals three major themes: establishment of a new role in married life with a changed husband, finding new ways of dealing with everyday life, and the hope for a future without further deterioration. Healthy wives, the analysis concludes, experience a change in their roles. They take on the roles of problem solvers, put themselves second, and strive, at the same time, to maintain a life of their own and to mobilize resources to cope with the demands and responsibilities of everyday life. They try to maintain their independence and also manage to discover new values and personal development. Preferring to manage on their own, and experiencing the motivational power of hope, the women seem to feel little need of professional support in everyday life.

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