Meet Geidy Saint Amand of Legado Infinito & Island Memorial Funeral Home

Today we’d like to introduce you to Geidy Saint Amand.

Hi Geidy, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
My name is Geidy Saint Amand. I am a Dominican woman, mother, licensed funeral director, embalmer, Certified Thanatologist (CT), author, entrepreneur, and founder of Legado Infinito.
I was born in San Cristóbal, Dominican Republic, and raised by two extraordinary women, my mother and grandmother, both single mothers. They never taught me resilience through speeches. They taught it through example. I watched them face life’s challenges with strength, faith, and determination, and those lessons shaped who I am today.
I lost my father when I was 11 years old. It was my first experience with grief. At the time, I didn’t have the words to describe what I was feeling, but I learned early that loss has the power to change how we see the world.
Years later, I immigrated to the United States with a visa, $200 in my pocket, and no family on this side of the world. I learned English as a second language, worked hard, continued my education, and built a career from the ground up.
Today, I am proud to be one of the few Dominican women licensed as a funeral director in the United States.
Together with my husband, Fred Saint Amand Jr., I co-own Island Memorial Funeral Home in East Orange, New Jersey. Beyond being my partner in business, he has been one of the most important people in my life and a constant source of support throughout my personal and professional journey. Together, we have spent years helping families navigate some of the most difficult moments of their lives with dignity, compassion, and cultural understanding.
Working in funeral service taught me something unexpected: people do not only grieve when someone dies.
They grieve the end of relationships, lost dreams, infertility, migration, changing identities, health challenges, aging, and the life they imagined they would have.
I realized that some of the deepest losses people experience are the ones society rarely acknowledges.
That realization led me to create Legado Infinito, a platform dedicated to grief education, emotional wellness, and legacy-building within Latino communities.
My mission is simple: to help people understand that grief is not only about death. It is also about learning how to live with the losses that shape who we become.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Not at all.
Like many immigrants, I faced language barriers, financial challenges, cultural adjustment, and the loneliness that comes with starting over in a country where no one knows your story.
Entering the funeral profession brought additional challenges. As a Latina woman in an industry where very few people looked like me, I often felt that I had to prove myself before I even had the opportunity to speak. It was difficult, but it also taught me perseverance and confidence.
Some of the hardest challenges were personal rather than professional. I experienced losses that didn’t always have a name. Moments that forced me to rebuild parts of my life and rediscover who I was.
Looking back, I realize those experiences became my greatest teachers.
They taught me how to sit with people in their pain without trying to rush them toward healing. They taught me empathy, patience, and the importance of simply being present.
Every difficult chapter became part of the foundation for the work I do today.

As you know, we’re big fans of Legado Infinito & Island Memorial Funeral Home. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
My work is centered around two organizations that serve people during some of the most significant transitions of their lives: Island Memorial Funeral Home and Legado Infinito.
Together with my husband, Fred Saint Amand Jr., I co-own Island Memorial Funeral Home in East Orange, New Jersey. Through our funeral home, we help families navigate loss with dignity, compassion, cultural understanding, and personalized care. We specialize in funeral services, cremation, memorialization, and international repatriation services, particularly serving diverse communities and families who need support during some of the most difficult moments of their lives.
Working in funeral service for many years gave me a unique perspective on grief and human resilience. It also helped me recognize something important: many people are grieving losses that have nothing to do with death.
That realization inspired me to create Legado Infinito, a platform dedicated to grief education, emotional wellness, healing, and legacy-building within Latino communities.
At Legado Infinito, we focus on what I call Invisible Grief, the losses that society rarely acknowledges. The loss of a dream, a relationship, fertility, health, identity, a career, or even the life someone imagined for themselves. These experiences often go unrecognized, leaving people to suffer in silence.
Through workshops, speaking engagements, support programs, books, journals, community initiatives, and my podcast, Un Cafecito para Sanar with Geidy Saint Amand, we help people understand, process, and navigate both visible and invisible losses.
What sets our work apart is that we address the full spectrum of grief. We do not only support families after a death. We create conversations around the emotional losses that affect people every day but are rarely discussed openly.
One of the accomplishments I am most proud of is the growing collection of educational resources, conversations, and community initiatives we continue to create through Legado Infinito. Through workshops, speaking engagements, books, journals, and our podcast, we are helping normalize conversations about grief, emotional wellness, and healing within the Latino community, creating a meaningful impact for those who often feel unseen in their experiences of loss.
Brand-wise, what makes both organizations unique is that they are connected by the same mission: helping people navigate loss with dignity, compassion, education, and hope.
Whether I am serving a family through Island Memorial Funeral Home or speaking to an audience through Legado Infinito, my goal remains the same to help people feel seen, supported, and understood during life’s most challenging moments.
What I want readers to know is that grief is not only about death. Grief is part of being human. And when we learn to understand it, we create space for healing, growth, and transformation.

How do you think about happiness?
Helping people feel seen.
The moments that stay with me most are when someone says, “I thought I was the only one.”
That sentence tells me everything. It tells me that someone has been carrying a burden in silence and that simply naming their experience helped them feel less alone.
Those moments happen in workshops, funeral services, speaking engagements, podcast conversations, and messages I receive from members of our community.
Outside of work, my daughter, my faith, my family, and a good cafecito make me happy, ideally all at the same table.
I am also deeply grateful for my husband, who has been my life partner, my business partner, and one of the most influential people in my journey. Much of what we have built has been possible because of our shared commitment to serving others.
Working in funeral service has given me a unique relationship with time. I do not save the good dishes for special occasions. I do not postpone important conversations. I do not leave love unspoken.
Death has taught me that life should not be lived waiting for the perfect moment.
The most important lesson I have learned is this:
“Dying well begins with living purposefully.”

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.legadoinfinito.org
• Instagram: @GeidySaintAmand @legadoinfinitooficial @uncafecitoparasanar