National Family Caregivers Month: Honoring Care, Connection, and Family Support
30 Oct 2026
Each November, National Family Caregivers Month recognizes the people who provide care and support to family members and loved ones facing illness, disability, aging, or other health needs.
The 2026 theme, Care Connects Us, reflects something caregivers experience every day. Caregiving is built on relationships: between patients and loved ones, families and healthcare teams, and caregivers and the communities that help them keep going. It can bring moments of extraordinary closeness while also carrying emotional, physical, and practical demands that are often difficult to see from the outside.
For healthcare organizations, senior living communities, caregiver groups, and other audiences, National Family Caregivers Month offers an opportunity to recognize those experiences and create more honest conversations about the people providing care.
National Family Caregivers Month Speakers on Caregiving, Dementia, Grief, and Family Support
Nora McInerny: Caregiving, Grief, and Emotional Honesty
Bestselling author and podcast host Nora McInerny brings honesty, humor, and compassion to conversations about illness, caregiving, grief, and loss. Drawing in part from her experience alongside her late husband during his treatment for brain cancer, she helps audiences make space for the complicated emotions that can accompany caring for someone through serious illness.
Her work reminds caregivers and healthcare professionals that resilience does not require pretending everything is fine. Connection often begins with creating room for people to say how they are really doing.
Kelly Conway: Family Caregiving and Difficult Care Decisions
Author Kelly Conway shares the personal experience of caring for her father, beloved comedian and television star Tim Conway, after he was diagnosed with normal pressure hydrocephalus.
Her story explores the devotion involved in caring for a parent as well as the challenges families can face when they do not always agree about a loved one’s care. With warmth and humor, Conway brings a relatable perspective to family communication, changing roles, and the difficult decisions that can accompany serious illness.
Ashley Campbell: Alzheimer’s Caregiving and the Healing Power of Music
Singer, songwriter, and Alzheimer’s advocate Ashley Campbell put her own career on hold when her father, country music legend Glen Campbell, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. She remained by his side as both a musician and caregiver, while also supporting her mother, Kim Campbell, who served as his primary caregiver.
Through storytelling, family memories, and music, Campbell offers an intimate look at Alzheimer’s caregiving and the role connection can play even as memory changes. Her presentations also recognize an essential part of the caregiving conversation: caring for the caregiver.
Byron Pitts: Dementia, Cancer, and a Family Coming Together to Care
Emmy Award-winning journalist and bestselling author Byron Pitts shares how his family came together when his mother faced dementia and cancer.
Different family members found different ways to help, from navigating conversations with physicians and managing appointments to handling responsibilities at home and simply spending time together. Pitts uses their experience to explore uncertainty, family teamwork, and the idea that caregiving often requires an entire network of people willing to show up in different ways.
Molly Jong-Fast: Aging Parents, Caregiving, and the Sandwich Generation
New York Times bestselling author and podcast host Molly Jong-Fast brings candor and humor to the often invisible work of caregiving.
Drawing from her memoir How to Lose Your Mother, she reflects on caring for her mother, writer Erica Jong, as dementia changed their relationship, while also navigating her husband’s cancer diagnosis, work, family responsibilities, and her own life. Her perspective gives voice to the emotional weight carried by people in the sandwich generation and others balancing caregiving with careers, children, and changing family roles.
Kate Doerge: Serious Illness, Grief, and the Strength of Connection
Author, grief coach, and Penny’s Flight Foundation Co-Founder and CEO Kate Doerge brings a parent’s perspective to conversations about serious illness, family, loss, and resilience.
Her daughter Penny lived with neurofibromatosis and underwent years of treatment before dying at 16. Doerge draws from that experience to explore the importance of connection during life’s most difficult moments and the ways families can continue finding strength, meaning, and even joy while carrying grief. Her work emphasizes that no one should have to navigate hardship in isolation.
Recognizing the People Behind the Care
Family caregiving rarely follows a predictable path. It may involve navigating a new diagnosis, helping an aging parent, supporting someone through cancer treatment, adapting as memory changes, or simply being the person who continues to show up when someone you love needs you.
National Family Caregivers Month creates space to recognize that work and the people behind it. These stories remind audiences that caregivers need care, understanding, information, and connection, too.