Jason R. Owens

Who’s Taking Care of Dad?

Find Your Voice. Ask Better Questions. Remember That You Matter, Too.

An Honest, Encouraging Keynote About Caring for a Parent Without Losing Yourself

At some point, the phone calls change.

The parent you once called for advice needs your help making decisions. You start keeping track of appointments, medications, names, and conversations you never expected to have.

You want to get it right. You love this person. And suddenly, you are carrying responsibilities you have never been taught to handle.

In Who’s Taking Care of Dad?, Jason Owens draws on his experience caring for his father to explore what happens when love becomes responsibility—and responsibility begins to reshape your life.

Through personal stories, practical observations, and moments of humor, Jason helps audiences find their voice, recognize the questions worth asking, and feel less alone in the work of caring for someone they love.

Ideal For

• Family caregiver conferences and appreciation events

• Aging and senior-service organizations

• Dementia and Alzheimer’s caregiver gatherings

• Employee caregiver groups and workplace events

• Churches and community organizations

• Healthcare organizations hosting family education events

• Senior living organizations hosting resident-family events

• Associations serving older adults and their families

Best for Events Where People Are Asking:

• How do I know my parent is getting the care they need?

• What should I be asking that I don’t even know to ask?

• How do I speak up when something doesn’t seem right?

• How do I work with care providers when I feel worried or unheard?

• How do I manage my parent’s needs alongside my own work and family?

• Why do I feel guilty even when I am doing everything I can?

• Who is taking care of me while I am taking care of everyone else?

Audience Takeaways

Audience members will leave better equipped to::

1) Understand the responsibilities they are carrying
Recognize the three worlds caregivers often manage at once: their parent’s care setting, the appointments and responsibilities beyond it, and their own life.

2) Ask better questions
Move from a general sense of worry toward clearer questions about what is happening, who is responsible, and what needs attention.

3) Find their voice as an advocate
Approach difficult conversations with greater confidence, clearer observations, and a stronger sense of what they need to understand.

4) Recognize their own need for support
Acknowledge the fatigue, uncertainty, grief, and competing responsibilities that can accompany caring for a parent.

5) Choose a manageable next step
Identify one question to ask, one conversation to begin, or one source of help to pursue.

Signature Keynote

Who’s Taking Care of Dad? Finding Your Voice When Someone You Love Needs You

You can arrange the care, answer the calls, attend the appointments, and still lie awake wondering whether you have missed something.

Caring for a parent brings decisions with emotional weight. Familiar family roles shift. Ordinary days fill with unfamiliar language. You may find yourself trying to understand a care system while also coming to terms with changes in someone you love.

Jason knows that experience from inside his own family.

As his father’s needs changed, he found himself learning how to ask more useful questions, follow up on concerns, and speak up in situations where he did not always feel prepared—or heard.

In this keynote, he shares what that experience has taught him about attention, advocacy, responsibility, and the limits of trying to carry everything yourself.

The talk makes room for the contradictions caregivers know well: love and frustration, determination and exhaustion, gratitude and grief. It also makes room for laughter, because even difficult seasons have their unexpectedly human moments.

Audience members leave with language for what they are experiencing, practical questions to carry into their own situations, and encouragement to include themselves among the people who need care.

Why Jason

Jason Owens speaks as a son who has taken an active role in caring for his father through Lewy body dementia.

His experience includes navigating assisted living, medical appointments, communication with care providers, and the daily decisions that fall to family members when a parent needs increasing support.

That experience informs his writing project, Who’s Taking Care of Dad?, and his conviction that families need help recognizing what to ask—not just instructions about what to do.

Jason brings the perspective of someone who has worried, followed up, spoken up, and wondered whether he was doing enough.

He combines that personal experience with years of speaking and workshop facilitation to offer an honest, thoughtful keynote grounded in the realities families face.

Keynote Format

Who’s Taking Care of Dad? is offered exclusively as a keynote.

A story-driven presentation combining personal experience, practical insights, and encouragement for people caring for aging parents.

Presentation length can be discussed to fit your event.

Best-Fit Themes

• Caring for aging parents

• Finding your voice as a family advocate

• Asking better questions

• Changing family roles

• The emotional demands of caregiving

• Balancing caregiving, work, and family

• Recognizing limits and asking for help

• Grief amid ongoing responsibility

• Supporting caregivers in the workplace and community

  Give your audience a keynote that recognizes what they are carrying—and helps them face the next conversation with greater clarity and confidence.