Bill and Judy Guggenheim spent seven years conducting research for their popular book Hello From Heaven.? During this time, they interviewed 2,000 people and collected more than 3,300 first-hand accounts of after-death communications (ADC).? ADCs provide what many believe is modern-day evidence of life after death.? Bill has presented his research at many national and regional conferences of The Compassionate Friends.

Bill Guggenheim:? It?s very helpful for them to be in a support group.? I urge parents to find a support group for their children so they can talk to each other and the larger cities do have some kind of center for grieving children now and it?s talking to one another that?s the most helpful I believe.

Bill Guggenheim:? What we write about here in this country as being unusual or controversial, in other parts of the world such as Central and South America, parts of Europe and Asia, especially the Catholic and the Spanish-speaking countries, Italian countries, things like that, people have these experiences at night and openly and willingly share them with one another the next day.

Bill Guggenheim:? Children are much more open because nobody tells them you can?t have it or that it?s unusual and so they have very elaborate experiences with their brothers or sisters or parents or friends or whoever it is who has died and they just will talk about it as a matter of course until some adult says, ?wait a minute.? What did you say??? Oh, yes, and then they?ll dismiss it as a dream, meaning not real.? Something or some other way of denoting it like don?t talk about that.? It?s not okay.? And so they become self-conscious and they learn not to share with adults and then eventually they close down.

Bill Guggenheim:? Our definition is an after death communication is a spiritual experience that occurs when someone is contacted directly and spontaneously by a relative or a friend who has died, and directly means that there?s no psychic or medium or third-party involved, and spontaneously means that our deceased loved ones determine when, how, and where to contact us.? So this is very tight.? It has nothing to do with ghosts and operations and these other kind of unusual experience and nothing to do with mediumship.? These occur spontaneously and they?re very very common.? We estimate that at least 60 million Americans, 20% of the population, have had one of these and other polls indicate it could be double that number, as many 120 million people.? But whatever it is, it?s a lot of people and these are very real experiences.

Bill Guggenheim:? I want to stress especially for bereaved parents, regardless of the form of the death of their child or of their loved one in this case, he or she will always appear healed and whole and in radiant health and no matter whether it was a car accident or a fire or explosion or a battlefield occurrence or whatever it may be, no matter how badly the body may have been damaged, they will come back appearing healed and in whole.? They?ll be usually typically smiling and they?ll be almost glowing with radiant health.

Bill Guggenheim:? Stop and think about communicating with somebody right here on the earth plane who?s filled with anger, fear or bitterness.? It?s hard to communicate and it?s hard to get through to people.? And if that?s their predominant set of emotions, they don?t want to hear us.? They don?t want to hear our message or whatever.? So imagine how much more difficult it is for them to receive a message from a loved one who?s not in physical form any longer.

Bill Guggenheim:? The best way, and this is wonderful if you are bereaved because people who are bereaved, they don?t sleep very well, their appetite goes way down, they?re constantly in a state of sadness or even depression and today, of course, everybody is saying, well, here, take anti-depressants.? Well, that?s one way to do it but a much more organic way you might say is to learn how to meditate.? And by that I don?t mean you go out and sign up for an expensive course for thousands of dollars.? You can just go to a local teacher as a group teacher for probably ten dollars a session or something for five or ten sessions or you can get an audio tape or CD or book or things like this or just sit down in a chair and listen to gentle music and learn to relax closing your eyes and doing some deep breathing and relaxing while you hear it.? And that?s what meditation is.? It?s deep relaxation and slowing down your brain wave frequency and becoming more open to the intuitive.? And you create space for yourself.? And while you do this, you begin healing emotionally, and you?ll find that it gets easier to sleep and you?ll eat better.

Bill Guggenheim:? The universal message is I?m okay.? You don?t have to grieve for me.? Go on with your own life.? Everything is okay here.? Because when someone dies, we have two concerns:? How is that person?? Do they still exist?? And the other is a sense of loss that we have because a death is a form of emotional amputation.? Some part of us is no longer there and that?s extremely painful.? It?s like having an arm or a leg or an eye or something just ripped up off you and it takes years to heal.

Bill Guggenheim:? Grief is grief and wherever there is love and then there?s the absence of it where that person is no longer there to touch, to talk with, to just be close to, that?s a tremendous sense of loss in all cultures, in all relationships.? Some people grieve for their grandparents when they die because they were raised by the grandparents.? That was the most nurturing, loving person in their life.? Of course, there?s no greater grief than the loss of the death of a child.? That?s the most painful of all and I?ve spoken to some women who had the death of a husband and the death of a child and not meaning to put down husbands, but they?ll say of the two, the death of the child was far more painful than the death of a husband.

Bill Guggenheim:? We expect everybody to die in a linear sense, you know, the great-grandparents, grandparents, ourselves, and our children.? So for our child to die out of turn, so to speak, is such a shock and so unusual relatively compared to the way it used to be.

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