We were lucky to catch up with Christine Dziedzic recently and have shared our conversation below.
Christine, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?
At 8 years old my grandmother died. Like many families, there was chaos and lack of sufficient funds. Watching my Mom and Aunt fighting and my Uncles trying to keep the peace. I became invisible and the man Jack from the cemetery made time to kneel down and make sure I was ok. He kept checking on me. I guess I grew up wanting to be like Jack. Over the years after my grandmother died. I would visit the cemetery and stop in the office. Jack would ask me how I was doing. And was very compassionate. He was the only one that recognized my grief.
At age 19, I responded to a help wanted ad. “ Recession proof, industry, six compassionate person to earn above average income” It turned out to be another local cemetery, So when I scheduled my interview, I also went to JCPenney and spent $100 Buying a black suit so I could be professional and like I was going to a funeral.
I was hired and once I realized I was able to be like Jack I was hooked that was 1989.
Christine, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
After 12 years working with families in the cemetery, funeral home and crematory environment, I went off to build grief support centers. So in 2001 I established Gone But Not Forgotten a registered trademark. A brick and mortar grief resource chain of stores in the United States and even branched out To British Columbia. And returned back to corporate. I’ve been a minister of consolation I’ve trained people in the cemetery and funeral industry to meet with families for sales and aftercare calls. I’m a crematory operator, and during the pandemic became very fluent in Death Tech.
Since 2020 I have built MISSUMUCH LLC
Consisting of Driveinmemorials.com
Which allowed families to have a socially distance memorial service with a custom memorial movie at a pop-up drive-in theater. We were able to help thousands of families put these plans together when they were unable to have in person services safely.
BackyardPartings.com Helps people with support while grieving the loss of their pet and put together a custom memorial service for their pets and assist in their DIY plans. HTTPS://Backyardpartings.LOID.space is building in the Virtual space for children.
Backyardpartings.co for virtual services.
Built in Argentina.
Basically throughout the world, our help in the grief space has helped so many. And now we’re turning that over to the youth working in XR and Tech to build these custom spaces online and in the meta-verse as MemoriaLVerse1.
FriendofLife.co building a bridge for caregivers to Loss..
The missUmuch LLC mission is to bring virtual services built by youth throughout the world with our collaboration of hundreds of vetted professionals.
We bring the best virtual grief support and memorial planning to everyone with access to the internet. And will continue in multiple metaverses.
How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?
I built this business from scratch, taught myself to build websites and stayed active on social media. Through social media, I have collaborations in India, Argentina, Ukraine, UK, Argentina, Nigeria. Sponsors will help grow out the model to help youth get the tools they need to make safe, accessible and creative tools for the future of grief support.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
My last corporate job came with a customer that was irate and unstable, and although he made many warnings, he ended up running me down in the parking lot at the funeral home where I was the manager I ended up re-injuring an old foot surgery and complex regional pain syndrome set in. The corporation I worked for, took no responsibility to make sure I was kept safe however, without this horrific event, I would not have been sitting still long enough to learn my way around the death tech space.
Contact Info:
- Website: Missumuch.com
- Instagram: MemoriaLVerse1
- Facebook: FriendofLife
- Linkedin: http://linkedin.com/in/missumuch
- Other: [email protected] 1-708-215-1190