Welcome to the website for Dr. Helen Scieszka (pronounced "sheska") who is affectionately known as "Dr. Helen."
After careers as an advertising executive, a therapist, a college professor, a Catholic parish Pastoral Associate and Diocesan Married and Family Life Director, Dr. Helen was able to finally focus on her love of writing.
"I love connections, patterns and symbols and the research that brings it all together," she states. "From the meaning of names, to our life stories, to the Catholic Faith. All is a gift from God and it is He who is the author of everything. We are on a journey; the journey He mapped out for each of us, to be and bring Him to the world and to lead us home to Heaven."
Her view is not surprising for as Dr. Helen shares, her mother recorded that her first words were "What's that?" And she has been questioning ever since and finding that which binds us to God and to each other.
For example, growing up in a Polish family, neighborhood and parish, she was told that their last name although possibly considered to be Ukrainian, meant "mountain path" in Polish. Actually, it only translates as "path" but as she was later to discover her paternal grandparents were from villages in Poland that are located in the foothills of the Carpathian mountain range on the border of Ukraine so it made sense that the explanation would be "path as in a mountain path."
Named after both of her grandmothers Dr. Helen looks to the lives of those two women, her ancestry from Poland, Germany, Scotland, France, England, Ireland, Austria, Hungary and the Netherlands, her patron saints and their lives as well as the meaning of her names as guides God has given her for her life.
As her first name means "light" and her middle name "graceful" she feels that with God's grace filling her she is to reflect His light on her spiritual "path" home to Heaven.
These core beliefs are reflected in her writings which we hope you will enjoy.