A note from

our Founder

While on a break from my career in business development, I spent five years in crisis response work with the beautiful Golden Retrievers of the LCC K-9 Comfort Dogs*, comforting those suffering and in need. Thousands of hours in settings such as Sandy Hook Elementary, the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing, and countless schools and communities reeling from the effects of suicide, drug overdose, car accidents, cancer deaths, and other sudden trauma. 

I loved, cared, watched, and learned.

In each of these tragic circumstances, people were desperate for comfort––but very few knew how to provide it.

I began to realize how ill-equipped most of us are to help those suffering. Not knowing what to say or do––afraid of saying the wrong thing––many will do nothing at all. 

Why? Human care behaviors are becoming woefully underdeveloped due to overwhelming societal changes––the rise in traumatic events, our increasingly divided society, and the evolution of a tech-driven world that has made us more accessible and less connected than ever before. Social cues are diminished as words and images on a screen replace the art of being present.

In search of a solution, in 2015 I started Club Comfort, a program for schools that had experienced traumatic events. We brought students together and cared for them as we taught them how to care for others. 

To meet the ever-growing demand for program sessions, we launched Inspiring Comfort LLC in 2018. We developed more extensive Evidence-Based Comfort Skills Programming with the help of our scientific advisors and observed the impact of our workshops, professional development days, and youth programs on tens of thousands of lives.

In 2019 I teamed up with designer Skye Quinn from TIME magazine, wrote and created our signature teaching book, Paws To Comfort: An everyday guide to learning how you can help mend our disconnected world. The book was fully funded on Kickstarter and launched as the site’s second-most popular book.

When the coronavirus pandemic disrupted the book’s launch, we shifted gears and focused on setting up train the trainer programming, certified twelve trainers, undertook a research study with the Suicide Prevention Center of New York, launched our Profiles in Comfort series, developed care surveys and a proprietary assessment tool and launched a comprehensive Learning Management System (LMS) for our training programs.

These efforts inform our work: to mend a hurting world.

You can help. Join us in creating cultures of care in our homes, schools, workplaces, places of worship and communities.

We all have too much to lose if we don’t find ways to care for each other. The alternative is a lonely and hurting world. 

And we can’t have that.

Comfort On!

Jen

PS ~ For further reading on why comfort is needed please visit our recommended reading section.

*Inspiring Comfort LLC is not affiliated with Lutheran Church Charities or the LCC K-9 Comfort Dogs.