A Nurturing
We are building a sanctuary for dementia care in Moore County, North Carolina where people living with brain change, their care partners, healthcare professionals, and the broader community come together to nourish a new kind of care.
Our Foundation
Founded by board-certified neuropsychologist Dr. Karen D. Sullivan and a group of deeply committed community advocates, Still Us will take shape as a working farm and first-of-its-kind campus serving as a local and international hub for progressive dementia care. More than a program site, the Still Us Sanctuary will be a permanent home for a new standard of care. Investment in this place establishes both the physical and symbolic foundation for transforming the lived experience of dementia for generations to come. By reducing the cognitive demands of everyday life and returning to our shared home in nature, we create bridges back to belonging, purpose, and respite. These experiences restore what dementia too often disrupts. By uplifting the entire dementia care circle, we can begin to change our relationship to one of the world’s most feared conditions.
Who and How We Serve
For the Person: We will offer a day program grounded in contribution, relationship, and rhythm, not entertainment or passive supervision. Participants engage in meaningful, ability-adapted activities alongside their trained volunteer friends.
For the Care Partner: Our care partner programs provide high-quality education, peer mentorship, and restoration including support groups, education workshops, care skills training, creative expression, deep respite and more.
For the Healthcare Worker: Dementia-informed training to build and support the skilled, compassionate workforce our community deserves.
For the Community: Volunteer and engagement opportunities that fill a deep human need for authentic connection and shared purpose. Offering community events that share our positive messaging.
Our Sanctuary Model
The Still Us sanctuary model emphasizes human presence and relational care, grounded in the belief that community itself can be medicine. It is built on a return to the original medicines: belonging, purpose, emotional expression, nature, understanding, and interdependence.
These human experiences are disrupted not only in dementia, but increasingly in modern life. Advances in how we live have weakened real relationships and community cohesion. We have the power to restore them.
The original medicines are not only essential in dementia care. They are essential to being human.
Care can only truly change when people living with dementia, their care partners, and those who support them are lifted up together.
