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the ocean to search for unknown lands.”
Pema Chodron, WHEN THINGS FALL APART
| Author – Paul Harbridge | |
 |
Hello! Thank you so much
for visiting my website.
I live in Toronto, Canada. My wife Isabel is from Barcelona, Spain. I have two children but only one, my son Daniel, lives with me. Helena is in Heaven. Helena’s Voyage is dedicated to her. I am a speech-language pathologist who works with adults with developmental disabilities (like Down Syndrome and Autism.) I have also worked as a teacher of English as a Second Language which allowed me to meet people from all over the world. I was raised in a Protestant home, but when my children started Catholic school, I converted to Catholicism. My hobbies are writing and drawing and playing golf. I also volunteer for the Special Olympics, and am enrolled in a program in Spirituality at Saint Francis Xavier University. |
 | About Helena When Helena was little, she was ill very often and called herself “the sick girl.” When she was ten, we enrolled her and her big brother in golf so they would get lots of sun and fresh air. And Helena started calling herself “the golfer girlie.” One wonderful pro became Helena’s coach and encouraged her to enter tournaments. In 2004, she won several junior events and at the end of the year won the Canadian Junior Golf Association’s National Order of Merit. And she adopted another name for herself: “Tiger Lily.” |
 | In 2005, now healthy for many years, Helena accepted an athletic scholarship to attend the University of West Georgia, and led her team to three wins that first year. Helena was a good student too and was on track to earning a 4.0 GPA. She was beloved by her teammates and fellow students for her unselfish encouragement and support of others. On Saturday April 15th, she phoned home to say she was tired and was going to have a nap. She never woke up. Her teammates found her in her bed, lying peacefully. The doctors believe it was a heart arrhythmia. Oh, what a terrible, cruel blow it was to her family and friends! |
 | This is part of a prayer I wrote for my daughter after she went to Heaven: My rosary has infinite beads If you or someone you know has lost a child, my Grieving page may be of some small help. |
 | How I came to write Helena’s Voyage After Helena died, even though I had believed in God all my life, I still asked myself: Who is God? Why did He snatch my daughter away? What is Heaven like? During that same time, on TV I saw images of soldiers, citizens and children killed in Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, Afghanistan, Somalia and Iraq. I thought of all those beautiful innocent people gone, and I knew – for the first time in my life - the anguish in the hearts of their mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers and friends. |
 | I read A History of God by Karen Armstrong and took a fresh look at Judaism and Islam. In one section, Armstrong speaks of a golden age in Spain when Muslims, Jews and Christians lived in tolerance side by side. This fascinated me because my children are half Spanish and I had always assumed that they had ancestors of all three faiths. I went on to read The Ornament of the World – How Muslims, Jews, and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain by Maria Rosa Menocal. After finishing this wonderfully written book, I decided I would try to write a novel of three young people growing up in Medieval Spain – one Muslim, one Jewish and one Christian – and started reading many books to research the topic. |
 | With all this information swimming in my head, one morning the idea for Helena’s Voyage came to me and I quickly wrote it down. At that time, I was also learning contemplative prayer and sometimes pictures would come to me while I prayed. I started to sketch them. The first one was of a star shining across an ocean onto the temples of the world’s religions. |
 | In The Little Flowers of St. Francis, I read a tale in which an angel carries one of the Friars Minor across a raging river. The friar exclaims, “Blessed angel of God, tell me thy name.” The angel answers,”Why dost thou ask my name, which is Wonderful?” And disappears. That seemed so right to me – that the things of Heaven would be beyond our understanding – and thus the heavenly messenger in Helena’s Voyage became “The Angel with the Marvelous Name.” |
 | The angel’s boat is modeled after the oldest known sailing vessel in history, one used in ancient Egypt over 4000 years ago. When the book was all done, I thought about changing the name of the little girl but my wife said, “Don’t you dare!” So while this is not you, Helena, it is for you. And for every other child in the world as well. |
