Dominic
MURGIDO
Author, Commentator, editor, speaker, writer
Founder of sudSSpirit grief support group
owner of It’s all about the bean coffee roasters
Meet Dominic Murgido
Dominic Murgido earned multiple degrees in criminal justice with concentrations in psychology, sociology, law-enforcement, and education. He instructed college courses as an adjunct professor and became a master coffee roaster after an entrepreneurial experience. He retired from careers in retail loss prevention, higher education, and social services.
Dominic founded a bereavement support group, sudSSpirit, a few years after the sudden unexpected death of his wife. He publishes a quarterly newsletter of the same name that is available on this website.
Besides being a grief advocate who provides support and solace to those who are grieving, He is also an advocate for safe driving by providing awareness and a voice to legislators to increase education and training for safe driving practices as well as penalties as they relate to traffic violations that cause injury and death.
Dominic is an author, commentator, editor, speaker and writer.
He is available to speak at events, conferences, luncheons, churches, community-based programs, hospices, and corporations. Dominic is also available for interviews, podcasts, and virtual presentations as well as book signings and meet the author events.
Getting to Know You
First love. We’ve all been there. But we were in a variety of places when this was all happening. Remember the feeling? It was hard to describe and we, ourselves, were unsure what it was or what to do with it all. Anxiety, sweaty palms, nervousness, feeling clumsy, stuttering, unsure what to say or how to act. It’s a time when you try to determine who you are. what you want, and who you want to be with.
Happening in the seventies, this story will bring a nostalgic feeling to many while a younger reader may wonder why no one is using smart phones or email. Conversation, writing letters, and listening to the radio and albums was the norm. Social media didn’t exist but pay phones and typewriters did.
I enjoyed writing Getting to Know You, experiencing the emotion between a couple on a small college campus as they began their adult lives individually while finding an option to do it together.
Interests
Founder
Dominic is the founder of sudSSpirit, a bereavement support group for the sudden unexpected death of a spouse or significant other that meets in person regularly. sudSSpirit is an acronym for sudden, unexpected death of a Spouse Survivors in participation to inform, renew, improve, and triumph.
The group is also open to those that lost a spouse, partner, engaged, living together but not married who have lost the love of their life through a disease or terminal illness.
The Back Story: For the first two and a half years after my wife, Sue, died I was either in some general grief support group or with a therapist just trying to get by from the devastation of losing my soulmate when a distracted driver killed her while they were running a red light. My wife, Sue, just turned 48 years old three days before.
After talking with those that also had lost their spouses, it became clear to me that I should find a grief support group for those that lost a spouse or partner. None existed at that time, so I decided to create one and sudSSpirit was born in 2008 and the rest is history.
Accomplished Non-Fiction Author
Dominic has written 3 books based on life experiences with his personal grief journey. He continues to write grief related, self-help, encouraging, and inspiring articles for other publications and his own quarterly newsletter.
The Back Story: Writing a book was never something I thought of but through years of facilitating sudSSpirit Grief Support Group and writing a newsletter, many attendees had asked where they could find all the reflections that I have written about in the newsletters.
There really wasn’t one place to find them and this website didn’t exist at the time. In 2018 I began to gather all of the reflections that I wrote up to that point and put them in one place. Two years later, Miss Your Forever was published in 2020.
The popularity of that book that included my grief timeline led me to write my second book, In a Heartbeat, (a memoir) in 2022 that detailed my grief journey over a thirteen-year period. Both of these books contain entries from my personal journal.
Looking back at those two published works, I decided to summarize the best of both of them with Life Changes While Grieving in 2024.
Each book has its own feel and provides a unique perspective to my thoughts on grief and how it changed me.
Accomplished Fiction Author
Dominic has written his first fiction book, Getting to Know You: Discovering First Love in the Seventies. A story that takes place decades ago when everyday life was lived in the present and you talked with one another in person, not through a screen. Life was simple, less stressful, and at times more meaningful.
The Back Story: I was going through some old boxes in storage and came across a box that contained hand-written letters between my wife to be and myself during our college years. The beautiful memories came flooding back to me of a time long ago at the beginning of our relationship. I thought of how the hand-written letter and its place in our culture has been almost lost to our current world of email, texting, and instant messaging.
I thought I would write a fictionalized story of a couple in the seventies meeting on a college campus. I found this experience fun and rewarding while I wrote about something light and happy in contrast to my previously published non-fiction works.
I look forward to continuing on this path of writing fiction but will not rule out tackling an occasional topic of interest in the non-fiction world in the future.
Master Coffee Roaster
Dominic is the founder and master coffee roaster of It’s All About The Bean, a very small online adventure that he enjoys as a hobby of sorts.
The Back Story: I love coffee but never thought that I would learn to roast my own coffee and in a commercial way. Five years after my wife died, I needed to make a change. So, I took a risk and made a choice to leave my comfort zone. I left a thirty-year career and relocated to another state to open a coffee shop and become an entrepreneur.
Along with that came the ambition to buy a coffee roaster and learn to roast my own coffee beans.
My pursuit of a brick & mortar coffee shop didn’t make it but my love for roasting coffee stayed. I continue to roast coffee from my home to this day and sell single origin and my own signature custom blend coffee online that I make exclusively for you in my small batch coffee roaster.
I am also available for speaking engagements concerning the origin of coffee and the coffee roasting process to groups, clubs, and organizations.
Events and Information
The next sudSSpirit Grief Support meeting will be Tuesday July 28th 2026 at 6 PM at the Exeter Community Library.
Please check out the following videos under the sudSSpirit tab:
Grief Awareness Day is on August 30th each year and was founded in 2014 by Angie Cartwright, public speaker and activist on grief awareness. Available here under the sudSSpirit tab in Resources is a link that takes you to an article written by Pam Washington, Certified Grief Educator, and was posted by BCTV in 2022. It also contains a video explanation by Angie Cartwright as well as additional information to grief resources and websites that may be helpful to you.
BCTV (Berks Community Television) with Circle of Life Coalition. March 21, 2019. An interview with Dominic Murgido about sudSSpirit Bereavement Support Group. Available here under the sudSSpirit tab in Resources.
Circle of Life Coalition Presents: “Letters to Heaven”. 2021. A Presentation by Dominic Murgido explaining the concept that he wrote about in a reflection that later became a part in his book, Miss Your Forever. Available here under the sudSSpirit tab in Resources.
The Circle of Life Coalition Presents: “Resilience and Learning to Live with Grief” Successful author and devoted CoLC Advisory Board member Dominic Murgido will define resilience in grief, utilizing personal experiences from his own grief journey. He will also discuss the value of taking risks, making choices, and self-reflection; while healing one day at a time. Available here under the sudSSpirit tab in Resources.
BCTV (Berks Community Television) Limited 4 part series, FOUND, hosted by Pam Washington, Certified Grief Educator and Dominic Murgido, Author / Founder of sudSSpirit. The inspiration for the show was the challenge to educate others about grief. The four episodes offer information for those who are grieving and for those who want to support someone who is grieving. The show is a platform for conversations about grief. Available here under the sudSSpirit tab in Resources.
Awaken Your Soul’s Journey: How to Live Life after Loss. An interview with Dominic Murgido by Angela Clement. November, 2022 Available here under the sudSSpirit tab in Resources.
Conscious Grief Series 5: Transforming Pain into Evolution and Growth. An interview with Dominic Murgido by Tara Nash. February, 2024 Available here under the sudSSpirit tab in Resources.
Please Note:
Dominic is available to speak about Grief in general and his own Grief Journey at events, conferences, luncheons, churches, community-based programs, hospices, and corporations. He is also available for interviews, podcasts, virtual presentations as well as book signings and meet the author events.
Dominic is also available for speaking engagements concerning the interesting origin of coffee, fun facts and statistics about coffee, and the coffee roasting process to groups, clubs, organizations, and events.
Author's Corner
Coming Soon!