Saying Hello To Life

Veteran pastor Hardy Clemons has culled his experiences with grief into this easy-to-read volume. Like birth and death, grief is an inescapable but inherent part of life. Saying Hello to Your Life After Grief is a book designed to help people who have experienced crushing losses survive and grow beyond the pain into the light of a new day. Hardy Clemons takes an in-depth look at grief, one of the most common and universal experiences of life. Clemons examines the situations that cause grief and describes the stages beyond grief. He concludes his discussion by explaining how we can help each other grieve creatively and begin to live after its wake. An appendix provides helpful suggestions for working with grieving persons

Remarkable scientific research, mapping the human genome, reveals how similar we all are to each other. Only a tiny fraction of difference separates us one from another. Each of us says "Hello" to our individual experience here on earth, and each of us will ultimately and assuredly say "Goodbye." Between those landmark events in our lives, there are all kinds and types of "Hellos" and "Goodbyes," some happy; some sad; some funny-and all part of the amazing school called life. This book awakens us to both the glitter, and sometimes the gloom, that life presents on an almost daily basis. It awakens a realization that life is truly important and meaningful, and that each day is a gift to be opened and treasured.

From the creator of The Rabbit Listened comes a gentle story about the difficulty of change . . . and the wonder that new beginnings can bring. Change and transitions are hard, but Goodbye, Friend! Hello, Friend! demonstrates how, when one experience ends, it opens the door for another to begin. It follows two best friends as they say goodbye to snowmen, and hello to stomping in puddles. They say goodbye to long walks, butterflies, and the sun...and hello to long evening talks, fireflies, and the stars. But the hardest goodbye of all comes when one of the friends has to move away. Feeling alone isn't easy, and sometimes new beginnings take time. But even the hardest days come to an end, and you never know what tomorrow will bring.

As a psychiatrist, Dr. Berne found that each person, in early childhood--under the powerful influence of his parents--writes his own script that will determine the general course of his life. That script dictates what kind of person he will marry, how many children he will have, even what kind of bed he will die in. Most of all, it determines whether he will be a winner or a loser, a spendthrift or a skinflint, a tower of strength or a doomed alcoholic. Some people, says Berne, have scripts that call for them to fail in their professions, or to be repeatedly disappointed in love, or to be chronic invalids. Here, he demonstrates how each life script gets written, how it works, and how each of us can break free of it to help us attain real autonomy and true fulfillment.

On February 20, 2014, media queen Oprah Winfrey launched a campaign on CNN against loneliness; she named her initiative, “Just Say Hello!” She also named as her campaign partners her long-time best friend, “CBS This Morning” co-Anchor Gayle King, and CNN’s chief medical correspondent and practicing neurosurgeon Dr. Sanjay Gupta to "help fight loneliness, lift spirits, and brighten days to save lives". Researchers have said loneliness can cut off a lifespan by ten years. Oprah’s initiative, if successful, could add ten years of existence to lonely lives, but Oprah is not the first celebrity to launch such altruistic enterprise: Stevie Wonder went that route in 1984 with "I Just Called to Say I Love You", and in 1985, Michael Jackson, Lionel Richie, Quincy Jones and a host of superstars with "We Are the World". Had those earlier initiatives succeeded, Oprah’s campaign might not be necessary. But, there are also available often overlooked very precious time-tested scientifically backed biblical formulas for combating loneliness some of which are cited in this book in the hope that, perhaps, Oprah and her team may consider using their celebrity positions to help America focus on the things of GOD. For, “no eye has seen, nor ear has heard, and human mind has conceived the things God has prepared for those who love him” (1Cor. 2:9). Hz