The Village Solution-Interview with author Carl Nassar

Loneliness doesn’t always look like being alone. Sometimes it looks like being a caregiver with a full calendar, a heavy heart, and nobody to hand the weight to. I sit down with psychotherapist and writer Carl Nassar, author of The Village Solution, to name the thing so many of us feel but struggle to explain: we’re exhausted because we’re living without the kind of village humans evolved to rely on.

Carl walks us through how village life used to spread care, work, and emotional support across a whole community and how consumer culture quietly replaced that with isolation, striving, and the promise that the “right stuff” will bring our people near. We talk about why ads hit so hard, why achievement can become its own trap, and why even the hero’s journey makes more sense when the real ending is a return to belonging. We even bring in Winnie the Pooh and Christopher Robin as a surprisingly accurate map for building a community that accepts us the way we are.

We also get practical about what to do when grief, trauma, or dementia caregiving makes you feel cut off. Carl shares what “village support” actually looks like today, from therapy and grief circles to intentionally showing up for a small group every week and letting care spill into real life. We close with two grounded tools you can start practicing right now: stillness and compassion, the qualities that make it safer to be honest and easier to be together.

If this conversation helps you feel a little less alone, subscribe, share it with someone who needs a village, and leave a review so more caregivers and grievers can find Patty’s Place.

Transcript

Welcome To Patty’s Place

0:10

Welcome to Patty's Place, a place where we'll talk about grief, dementia, and caregiving. I named this podcast in honor of my mom, Pat, who passed away from dementia about two years ago. I'm your host, Lisa, and we will talk about things that help us not feel so alone today. So grab your cup of tea, your cup of coffee, or if you're having that really bad day, your glass of wine, and come join us. So today we have our guest is Carl Nassar. He is a psychotherapist, author of The Village Solution, and a regular contributor to psychology today and the Joseph Campbell Foundation. So welcome, Carl, to Patty's Place. Yes, thank you for having me. I'm very glad to be here, Sydney, with you. Yes, I'm I'm excited to uh to talk to you about all this. One of the things that I noticed uh when I was looking up all your information, you have a thing that says why you're exhausted and why it's not your fault. Yes, I do. Yes, so can you can we explore that a little bit? Because I feel exhausted a lot. Absolutely.

Why Modern Life Feels Exhausting

1:13

Happy to do it. Ties well into the theme you brought up about loneliness. You know, for we humans have been on this planet for some two million years. And over the course of that two million years, for almost the almost the entirety of that time, we lived in villages. We lived in these places where if we were born into a village, if if you'd been born into a village, Lisa, there'd have been 46 eyes lovingly looking at you. There'd be 46 pairs of hands ready to scoop you up. When you cried, your cry would be responded to in 25 seconds or less. You'd be held close for nine hours a day. As you grew up in that village setting, you would work collectively with your fellow villagers. You would together work to meet all your needs. And because you're working together, you'd only have to work for three, four hours a day. And by the end of that day, uh, you know, this was a village that would realize that work was in the service of life, not the other way around. And so once that work was done, the day would open wide. And what would you do at that time? Well, someone might start singing and song would rise in the air. You'd linger around meals for a long time, swapping stories. Some would start a fire at night and you'd talk about the origins of the stars together. And there was all this time to be, to connect, to be with each other. But starting some 20,000 years ago, toward the end of the last great toward the end of the last great ice age, and carrying forward until about 500 years ago, the villages began to slowly disappear. And 500 years ago, they began to disappear at a remarkably fast pace. Until today, they're pretty much all but gone. The ones that remain live on the edge of extinction. And what's replaced them, what's stepped in in their place, is consumer culture. So when you and I arrive into the world, you know, um, we arrive with minds still wired by two million years of evolution. So our minds, when we're born, look around and say, hey, my village should be here. I'm ready to be held in 25 seconds or less when I cry. I'm ready for 46 people to greet me. But when we show up in this world, that's not what we get at all. We, to our amazement, there's just two people here, right? Our parents. And they're worn thin because these two people alone are being asked to do what a whole village once did. They must meet all the needs of life on their own. And so it's early mornings to work, uh, evenings spent picking up groceries, cooking meals, doing dishes, folding laundry, paying bills. So at the end of the day, you arrive, um, you know, collapsed in front of a TV, and that's even before, but even before we're born, right? And then we arrive on the scene with all the emotional, relational needs of a child. There's no way our parents can give us what a village once did. Right? So from a very early age, we cry from our cribs, and sometimes no one comes. Sometimes someone comes worn thin. But either way, we know uh what our what our little heart needs isn't met. And what arrives in its place is somewhat of a loneliness, uh quiet that sort of creeps in under our bedroom door and arrives beside our crib and doesn't leave. So from a very early age, we're be we're beginning to realize we're gonna have to figure out how to do this life together, do this life on our own. It's a very big shift in this culture where everyone is asked to do an individual work life, an individual home life, an individual, you know, life, as opposed to what it used to be, where we did things collectively together. So the exhaustion we feel is the exhaustion of living in a way that really we're not have not evolved to live in, which is doing everything on our own by ourselves, as opposed to doing things collectively as a shared group. When

Belonging And The Consumer Culture Trap

5:05

you were talking, it made me think of when I was in Ireland two years ago. And I feel like uh when I was there, I felt like I was part of something. I felt like I was part of the villages and things because um the time was just so much more relaxed and like just even going with the pubs and stuff. And I'm not even talking about the drinking part, you know, just being there. Yeah, I just that's what it reminded me of instantly. Like when I was in Ireland, you know, and I that's how I felt. I felt so connected there with that. Well, that's right. I mean, that's so that's so much our wiring. It's so innate in us to to want to belong, to want to be a part of, to want to connect with, you know, and what's remarkable about this is this is the very thing that consumer culture exploits when we're young. Because think about when we're really small, um, and consumer culture arrives with two million advertisers and a trillion dollar budget every year. And what do these ads sell us on? They're not selling us the product, they're selling us the promise this product will bring our people near. Right? You look at the ad for, say, uh hamburger helper, right? A mom and daughter sitting in the kitchen kind of distant. Mom rips open the hamburger helper package, yeah, and what happens? Poof, presto in an instant. Right. They're in their dining room, mom and dad leaning forward, daughter leaning with them, you know, and the promise is hey, tear open that hamburger helper, and you know, there's your family right there around you. And if you watch the ads, whether it's McDonald's or Kentucky Fried Chicken or ads for Frisbee's, you know, ads for the Hot Wheels, right? You're alone in your room, all of a sudden you click the Hot Wheel pieces together, and what happens? The lonely room transforms, friends appear, racing cars together, right? Ads just sell us on this promise. They say, Look, you know why your people aren't here? You just don't have the right stuff. If you just have the hamburger helper, if you just have the Hot Wheels set, your people will show up. And the rub is, as children, this is what we know in the field of psychology, children believe advertisers the same way they believe their parents and their teachers. So children actually believe a hamburger helper will bring your family near, Hot Wheels will bring your friends into your bedroom. And so we start to get hooked on this idea if I could just get the right stuff, my people will come. And this is the sort of this is consumer culture's trick. It knows we long for our people. And so it uses that and exploits that to get us hooked on consumption. And it does the same thing actually to get us hooked on on producing. Because we get to school age, we go to school, teachers start to say, hey, succeed, achieve, get a perfect score. We come home with that Red A plus, and our parents go, great job, and they're proud of us. We come home with a report card full of them. Our parents go, look at that. And they take us out for ice cream. We go, look, this might work. Yeah. Achieve really well, people will notice me, like give me attention, I'll finally be seen, my people will appear. And so early on in life, we get hooked on this, you know, uh acquiring stuff and achieving, um, really, you know, fueling consumer culture. Um, but it's really just a trick, it's a treadmill. It never actually takes us where we want to go to that pub in Ireland where we feel like, hey, there I am, I belong here. That's

The Hero’s Journey Back To Village

8:32

right. Yes, I I belong here. Uh and when you're talking about the village, I read one of your articles, the hidden truth in every hero's journey, what Christopher Robin, Winnie the Pooh, and Joseph Campbell teaches us. Can you talk about that with Winnie the Pooh and the Village? Because I I really enjoyed that. No, I appreciate that. Yeah, it's uh uh I appreciate reading the article, and it's a charming story, so thanks for asking. Yeah. Yeah. You know, in 1949, Joseph Campbell wrote a book called The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Okay. And the premise of his book was this: that in every great story, you'll find as you'll find this similar narrative. Whether you're opening a children's book, whether you're opening a sci-fi trilogy, whether you're reading a script for a Hollywood blockbuster, in all of them, the same thread, the same narrative is woven through it. And he called it the hero's journey. And it has three parts. The hero departs, he leaves his ordinary life, the hero transforms, he goes on some journey that changes him, then the hero returns. And in our culture, we tend to think of this as in a very individual individualistic way. We think of, you know, the common townsfolk who leaves the town, goes out to slay the dragon, along the way, grows and becomes somebody bigger than he was before, and returns home. And on his return, what does he get? He gets the princess's hand in marriage. Or he's handed the big pot of gold, or the crown is placed on his head. And we think of it as a story of individual triumph. But really, I think so many of these heroes' journeys really don't aren't about ending in individual glory. They're much more about the return to the village. Um I'll explain what I mean using using that story of Christopher Robin and Winnie the Pooh. Right? I read those, my parents read those stories to me when I was three years old as bedtime stories. So they're they're very familiar to me. In fact, the books are sitting here in my office on a bookshelf not too far from me right now. But the story of Christopher Robin, it begins with really sadness. It's a story of a young boy who's left alone in his room by parents who are busy with social engagements and work commitments. He doesn't have aunts or uncles around. And what does he do? He does what children do that is just remarkable. He dreams up the world he wants to be a part of, right? He dreams up this hundred-acre wood and he fills it with the stuffed animals to come alive. Right? So you've got Piglet and his constant worry, you've got rabbit and his need for order, you've got Tigger and the boundless energy, and of course you have Winnie the Pooh, and who I think sort of embodies stillness and compassion because he kind of moves to the world with a honey, honey sort of sweetness. And what happens uh in the Hundred Acre Wood with Christopher Robin and his imagined friends? Well, remarkably, they just go on small adventures together, right? They find Eeyore's tail and stick it back on Eeyore, or Pooh goes to Rabbit's house, eats too much honey, gets stuck in his hole, stuck on the way out in Rabbit's hole, and they have to pull them out together. Um, you know, or they chase imaginary heffalumps and woozles. But what happens along the way in these adventures? Well, what happens is they start to belong to each other. They come together and they become a village of sorts. And that's really, I think, the story of Winnipeg Pooh. It's the story of this lonely boy who dreams up a village and then becomes a part of that village he dreams up of. And that I think is really the journey, the real hero's journey for all of us to take. That we arrive here in the isolation of consumer culture. Uh, and we need to find our way back to our own villages, to that place of belonging, to our own Irish pubs where we feel, ah, I've arrived, I'm here. Like in cheers, when Norm arrives and cheers, and they all go, Norm! He's known, he's home, right? Now, I'm not suggesting the pub is our true village. Right, right. But thematically we get the idea, right? Right. Well,

Grief, Caregiving, And Shared Support

12:29

and in terms of when um, you know, when you're a caregiver or you're going through an illness or even any type of traumatic event, you do feel very lonely. And to find that village of somebody that understands you, like I always think of when you're talking about Winnie the Pooh, how they always say Eeyore kind of basically had he was depressed, but his friends accepted him that way, you know. Right, right. You know, like they didn't try to make him say you have to be positive. They just they comforted him when he could, right, you know, with it. And you talk about too how we hear a lot about how loneliness and the mental health crisis, like how do we how do we go about like how do we find those villages of the people that just kind of they get us, you know, and you feel accepted. Yeah. So there's two things you said I want to res I want to I want to talk about. One is something really important that you shared, which is grief and isolation, because as you pointed out, or loss and isolation, or trauma and isolation, and how difficult that is, because we're really not wired to go through these things alone. That's just not how we're wired as humans. I mean, the way it used to work in in you know villages of long ago, even in even in villages today, the few that remain, in many of them, is you know, if you were a young child and we'll just say your your father had died, for example, you know, what would happen would be, you know, the village would lay down everything. If someone was sharpening a spear, they'd put the spear down. If someone was cooking, they'd stop the cooking. And if someone was weaving, they'd stop weaving. And they'd come together and they'd form a circle around you. And they'd arrive and they'd stay. Not just for hours, but sometimes for days, sometimes for weeks. And they wouldn't stay and ask anything of you, much as you know, no one asked anything of Eeyore. They would stay, right? They would stay and they just hold this still space where it would be whatever comes up is welcome here. And they'd hold this compassionate space where you could feel them saying, We don't want you carrying this alone. This is too much for you to bear by yourself. We want to be here to carry this with you. And in that space, what could happen? Well, that child's grief, that child's sadness, that child's loss could start to just bubble up and erupt out of them because they would know there was room for it. It was a welcome there. And they could just allow this to move through them. Now, this isn't some instant process where after three days of crying, they're fine, their father's gone, it's no problem, right? It's just a process. But there is that felt sense of you don't have to carry this alone. We will carry this together. And the relief that comes from knowing someone's here to hold me, to pick me up and keep and swoop me into their arms and let me know I don't have to go through this by myself is is transformative in terms of our capacity to go through grief. And we've in many ways lost that in our culture. Yes, we have. And in many ways, modern day therapy is really an attempt to recreate what the villages already had. You know, that really is in some ways what the firelight of therapy is, right? The firelight of therapy is very much come into this office, let me hold a still open space for you. And in this space, let me support the um what's the word? The catharsis of what's inside you. Let it come on out of you, saying, Let me hold it with you so you don't have to hold it alone. Um, and so you know, we do have these venues in our modern culture where we try to find spaces where this can happen. It's just not everywhere. It's a little more hidden in our culture. Yeah. You can find it in a therapy office, you might find it in a church, you might find it in an AA group, you might find it in a grief circle. They're there, but our culture doesn't point to them, right? What does our culture point to? The headlines say, look at the powerful person, look at the rich person, right? Yeah. They don't, there's never a headline that says, you know, uh, man sits beside grieving woman, puts arm around her, says nothing. That's never headline news, right? No. And yet it's the most important thing we can do for each other. It is. So, you know, that's why it's hard, it's hard to remember, but it's still there, those those places where people want to sit with us in our grief, in our trauma, in our loss. And it's really important we find those places so that we don't have to go through them alone. It it is, because you do feel very alone, whether you're in that caregiving process or when that your loved one dies, you do. Even when you're in a room full of people who have all lost the same person, you still feel alone because you're trying then to figure out who you are after that person has passed, or who you are as a caregiver, because your life is turned completely upside down. And and you do, you just you feel very lost and alone through all of it with that. And I think it's important for people to be able to say it's okay to ask for help, and I think that's part of finding your village, because I think we think it it makes us not strong if we ask for help. And absolutely. And and we need to ask for help. It's I mean, it's hard, it's hard to do it, but you you have to in order to take care of yourself with it.

Building Your Own Village In Real Life

17:38

So do you think it's fixable, this loneliness and finding the village? Like how do we find our way back to each other? Yeah, you know, I mean, look, you know, I I think in many ways the way back is much easier than we imagine it to be. Uh, because I think it's inside of us already. As you said, you walked in that pub and there it was, and you knew I have a sense of belonging here. It's it's it's innate in us to want it, it's innate in us when we feel it to want more of it. It's just the fact that the culture sort of hides these places from us. They're not obvious or evident to us. And you know, my my invitation to people is to is to try something. You know, be try something that requires, you know, a little bit of courage, a little bit of bravery, but but take the risk, right? See if you can find a group of five, six, seven, up to twelve people, you know, perhaps an interpersonal processing group in a therapist's office, as one example of many, you know, and set aside three hours a week to sit down together as that group and just uh do what the culture doesn't allow us to do. You just pointed out the culture doesn't allow us to do. Because as you just said, in some ways, right, we live in a culture that really um looks for positivity, looks for cheerfulness, uh, wants us to just be okay. How are you? I'm fine. Right. Right? You know, um and enter this group and go ahead and let's have the courage to just speak our truth, to arrive with vulnerability, to arrive, you know, with willingness to share those soft, tender places inside of us, and then to greet each other in that space with soft eyes and tender hearts, so that it becomes a space where you know we do form that village circle where stillness and compassion can grow. Uh and you know, um, from that space, you know, when I brought that up to someone, they said, Well, that's not realistic. Nobody has three hours a week to just spend sitting down with each other. We're all really busy. And I said, Well, in some ways that's true, but in other ways, think about this, right? I mean, the most popular sport in America is football, right? And most people will find three hours a week to sit down and watch a football game every Sunday. Yeah, and sometimes on Thursday and Monday. That's right. Yeah. That's right. You know, so if you could find three hours to watch a football game, I'm sure we can find each three hours to sit with each other. Because once we start, as soon as we start and we feel that sense of place, that sense of belonging, that sense of, oh, this is like walking into cheers and having everybody say norm, we feel welcome here. We want to go back. It pulls us to go back, you know, and to just sit in that space with those people to get to know each other's stories, but also to get to know each other's hearts. Because what starts to evolve after a certain amount of time of sitting in a group like that is we naturally want to extend our care to each other outside that group. We start to say, what would it look like if we cared for each other outside those three hours each week? And we decide, hey, let's bring let's bring soups to each other when someone's sick. Um let's offer, let's show up at 2 a.m. when someone's in crisis and needs child care. Let's call on Tuesday morning and say, Lisa, how are you? I've been thinking about you. Are you okay? Um we just start to want to do that for each other. And as soon as we start to do just those simple things, show up three hours a week to talk openly and start to extend that care into every everyday life, just that alone has taken us back to at least some version of that village. Because all of a sudden we're not living lives all by ourselves. There are lives that have begun to be woven into each other, that have begun to be woven together. Our sense of security stops coming from just trying to build that individual pile of wealth and starts to come more and more from I've got you because you got me, and we've got each other, we've got each other covered here. Uh, you know, and that safety starts to settle in as well. Now, you know, go ahead. You jumped. I was gonna say, what do you say to somebody who isn't, they say maybe they're not a group joiner? You know, like how about if they are around people that, you know, maybe they feel the village is is a couple dogs or a few cats, or or maybe for them it's walking, you know, walking uh in nature. That's where they feel, you know, their safety or their comfort. Absolutely. So a couple things I'm glad you brought that up. So a couple things about that. You know, I think um people have brought this up. Well, that feels like too much for me. I don't think I want to sit down with a group of people for Three hours. I think that freaks me out. You know? Well, then find the group of people you join, just doing something that's shared, right? If you like to hike in the woods, find the hiking group, right? If you like to play pickleball, find the pickleball group, right? At least begin in that way. Begin to form those communities that center around the things you already love that are easy to join and use that as the starting point to start to build those connections. You know, and then as you spend time with those people, just start to linger a little bit more, start to lounge a little bit more. Don't hurry off at the end of the pickleball game or the end of the hike if you don't have to. You know, um, so that you make time for each other and just allow the connection to happen in that slow, easy space of just being with each other. Well, and too, and when you're going through, like you you said, that we're not wired for the trauma and everything. When you are going through, whether it's a caregiver or or it's grief, to allow yourself that time, even if it is an hour or two playing pickleball or going for a hike, it's important to help to help you with your mental health with all of that. Even though we we think we should be more productive, but absolutely. It's the funny thing, right? The time we most need to slow down is when we're most anxious. We don't think we can. Yes. Right? The time we mostly do the people is the time where we feel like nobody's gonna want me the way I am right now, right? You know, because you know, sometimes we feel like, man, I'm just in a I'm just sad right now, nobody's gonna want to be around me. If we can find those, if we can find those people who are comfortable with just whoever we are, as you know, the uh the folks in the poof were with Bior. If we can find those people that are just okay with us being that way, suddenly we feel okay with being that way, right? Because a real important part of what we really need so much of is compassion. And what is compassion at the heart of it all? Well, compassion is just the ability to keep our heart open to whatever is rising up, to whatever life's bringing in this moment. Maybe it's joy, maybe it's beauty, but maybe it's suffering. And so, you know, when we arrive with compassion or somebody meets us with compassion, and we're in a place of sadness, we go, oh, it's okay to be sad. And suddenly, whew, I'm not fighting my sadness anymore. It's just okay that I'm here. And the relief of being okay with where we are is is what we all need all the time. My mom used to, for her with her really good friends, when they would say, Oh, I'm fine, and she knew stuff was going on, she'd look at them and go, No, you're not. You're not fine. Now tell me what's wrong. She would be like That's right, go mom, let you go, right? Like, come on, let's be real with each other here, right? We're only on this planet for a little bit of time. Right. The least we can do with this time together is be willing and willing to tell each other the truth so that we can feel like we're all going through this truth together. Yeah, and I think that's why people kind of came to her because she, you know, she was that safe space for people. You know, she didn't she she didn't expect people to be happy all the time. You know, she I don't want to say she embraced the sadness, but it didn't bother her if people were sad. You know. That's the way to live. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And I get the sense, I get the sense you've got that in you too, Lisa. Uh well, yeah, be you know. Well, my mom had a lot of tragedies growing up and stuff, so I think she just knew that that was part of life, you know. Uh-huh. So that that's it, right? It's part of all our lives, right? Nobody nobody gets nobody escapes this life free from trauma, free from loss, free from grief. Yeah, you know, as much as we'd like that to happen, that's just not the reality of it.

Stillness, Compassion, And Being Present

25:37

With it You also say on the path home, we need we need two companions, stillness and compassion. Why do you why do you say those two? You know, I'll tell you what, these there are these researchers, and what they did was they studied methods to wholeness. Um, like what are the things that that lead us to a sense of wholeness within ourselves, that lead us to a sense of wholeness together, a sense of being connected to each other. And what they did was they studied um mythic traditions that lent themselves, that led to wholeness. They studied depth psychologies, they studied theories of counseling, and they metaphorically pulled out a scalpel and cut open this um these deaf psychology, they cut open the theory of counseling, they cut open the spiritual tradition, uh, and they said, what is it inside of these things that leads people to wholeness? And what they found in many ways amazed them. There were just two elements, two common factors, two gentle forces, I call them two golden threads, that they found inside every one of these methods. And they were stillness and compassion. That whenever stillness and compassion were present, these methods led to wholeness. And when they were absent, they didn't. And um, you know, uh researchers studying just psychology alone found out that it doesn't really matter what modality your therapist practices, as long as they hold a still compassionate stance, um, the therapy tends to be quite effective. It matters far more than any method they might use. And so, you know, let me just say, what are stillness, what are compassion, right? So what are they? What do they mean, right? And by stillness, what I mean is the ability to show up in this moment, right here, right now, free from judgment, free from expectation, just open, just curious, huh? What is this moment going to bring me? What's coming here? Right? And then there is compassion, which is once we arrive in this moment, keeping our heart wide open to it, right? To whatever life is bringing, the beauty, the suffering, so that if we arrive in this moment and find our own pain, we stay open to it. If we arrive in this moment and see pain in the stranger's eyes, we stay open to that. If we arrive in this moment and see the loneliness in a loved one's um stance, we stay open to that as well. And you know what um and what we find when we feel this still compassion sense is hey, I want to keep living this way. When we arrive in those moments, we've all had those moments, right, where we just feel, ah, I'm just right here in this very still moment, my heart is wide open. We feel like, man, if I could just stay here, this would be great. This would be so good. I would love to just be here all the time. That's how I felt in Ireland, not just in the pub. Like I didn't want to come home. Right. I just it was it was it was the stillness and it was the beauty, and it just uh yeah, I just felt so good there. I was like, do I have to come home? I was right, right. You know, and it's funny because these are in many ways the counter forces to of consumer culture, right? Consumer culture promotes, you know, striving, achieving, accumulating, right? Those are the forces that drive consumer culture. And yet the forces that really have us feel settled, that bring us back to ourselves, that bring us back to each other, that bring us back to the village, are just being more still, more compassionate. And the wonderful thing about stillness and compassion is they are innate in who we are, unlike striving and you know, accumulating, which in some ways are taught to us by the culture. Stillness and compassion are are innate in all of us from the time we arrived. And so the work for us really is in many ways, how do we pull them out from inside of ourselves so we can hold hands with them in our everyday lives? And of course I can talk about that, but I just wanted to get to that space. And I think that's hard for people because it's scary to be still. It's it's much easier to be busy, busy, busy and not be still and face what whatever it is that's going on because it's it's hard. That's right. If I stop, everything that I've been running from, everything that I've been hurrying away from will finally catch up to me. That's the fear, right? And as some of my clients would say, if I start crying, I'm gonna cry forever. Right. So don't get me to start crying right now, because you don't want to see me cry forever, and I don't want to see me cry forever. And I'm saying, no, no, no, that's not how it works. You know, slow down, come in this moment. If the tears come, I'll hold them with you. And don't worry. You know, the crying will just you'll there'll be a lightness that comes as you start to empty that bucket that's been that's been filled up inside of you.

Dementia Lessons, Resources, And Closing

30:21

The one thing that I did learn uh with my mom with her dementia is that people who have dementia, Alzheimer's, they truly do live in that moment because that is all they know. Right. So being there with her, I learned more and more how to be present in that moment because one moment she you know, I would joke with her. She'd be like, she was hot, and then two minutes later she was cold. I'd be like, You're hot, cold, hot, cold, you know. Um but I learned more how to be mindful and to be in that moment with her because that was the only moment I had with that. Right. You know, and it is really hard to do in general to find that, but by being mindful, you can kind of try to find your village again. And your book, The Village Solution, it is on your website, correct? Yes, there's a sample chapter there. Okay. And now is it available to purchase anywhere? Not yet. It's uh not quite yet in print. It's coming soon, but it's not out yet. Okay. Um so if people wanted to learn more about all this, they can go to your website, correct? Yes, the website has sample chapters, um, it has uh free free hour talks people can attend. Uh there's uh sign up for a newsletter. Uh there's there's a fair bit there for people to to learn more. Okay. And it's Carl Nassar.com slash landing. Is that correct? Or is that you can just do carlnassar.com. Okay. That'll work. That'll get them right there. That'll get them right there for that. And then and you also have a lot of that's where I found a lot of your articles, which I thought were very interesting as well. Yeah. Because you've been in psychology today for a lot of times, correct? Yeah, for a couple of years I've been writing a column, call a regular column for them. Oh, okay. So yeah, you can uh people can get your your um your articles and that. Uh I was talking earlier. Have you speaking of Winnie the Pooh, but did you ever read the the Tao of Pooh and the Tay of Piglet? The Tao of Pooh is sitting just across from me over here. Okay. Very familiar with it. I never did pick up the second book. Okay. I must admit to not having the second one. But uh I bought that back, I think, in the early 90s, was it when it first came out? Yeah. Yeah. Loved that book. I absolutely fell in love with it. Yeah. People can learn a lot from Winnie the Pooh. I agree. Yeah. I'm right there with you. Yeah. Yes. So, you know, and even though we're feeling lonely, we need to find our village, whoever they are. That's right. Whether it's a pig and a bunny and a bear and a bouncing tigger. Um, you know, we whatever, whatever eclectic set of characters it takes, finding our way back to each other is what matters so much. Yes, and that can help you through all of the hard times in life for it. Absolutely. Thank you so much for joining us. I've learned so much today. Yeah, I really enjoyed my time with you. Thanks, Lisa, for having me on and for having the show in the first place. And what a beautiful way to honor your mother. Well, thank you. So, well, I hope everybody has enjoyed this episode. Hopefully, we can help you find your village. Uh so uh please make sure you leave a review, like us, subscribe to us on YouTube, and hopefully you enjoyed your cup of coffee, your cup of tea, or if you had that really bad day, a glass of wine, and just know you are not alone. And join us for another edition of Patty's Place.