OUR ROOTS
" What do you need "
When someone loses a loved one, that question is asked again and again.
Friends ask it. Family asks it. Coworkers ask it.
For many families, the honest answer is simple:
“I don’t know.”
Grief arrives at the same time that urgent decisions must be made. Memorial services must be planned, family members notified, gatherings organized, and countless logistical details handled quickly. In the middle of shock, sadness, and emotional exhaustion, someone still has to figure out what happens next.
Often, that responsibility falls on one person—the individual everyone turns to when something must be done.
For Dee Smith, that moment became deeply personal.
Two years ago, after the loss of her baby sister Charlette, Smith found herself in a space she had been in hundreds of times before. Raised in a church family, she understood the rhythms and protocols that surround funerals and memorial services.
She knew what was supposed to happen.
And yet, despite that knowledge, she still felt lost.
Eight years earlier, Smith had already experienced profound loss when both of her parents passed away within three months of each other. Now, standing in the reality of losing her sister, the weight of grief felt overwhelming.
“I was angry with God,” she recalls. “It felt like too much.”
But in the midst of that pain, Smith began to realize something important. If someone who understood the process could still feel disoriented in that moment, many other families must be experiencing the same confusion.
Rather than allowing the grief to remain only grief, she chose to turn it into something that could serve others.
“I wanted to create something that honored my family,” Smith says. “Something that could help people when they reach that moment where they don’t know what they need or where to begin.”
The result was The Comfort Giver™.
The Comfort Giver functions as a bereavement concierge service, helping families navigate the many responsibilities that arise after the loss of a loved one