About Helena

Pink Tulips: - origins

-Prologue From “Before Forever After”

Pink tulips in a frosted glass vase; they stood erect at first, bending their heads only slightly. As their petals unfolded they gently filled with air, and as they swelled the intensity of their color faded, just a fraction of a shade. Days passed and they stretched their necks like swans towards the light that fell into the room from the bay window.

They leaned. They took a bow. I loved watching them change.

‘Mama,’ my younger daughter Kyla asked, ‘when you buy tulips, why do you always buy the pink ones?’

Indeed, why always pink tulips?….

In 2025 I donated a damaged poster to the Nelson Mandela foundation. It’s provenance was Ruth First’s office in Mozambique. The foundation was curious, “How had I come to have this poster”

This video records that story, a defining moment in personal history, a moment that influenced my choice to live in South Africa

"The Poster" - a defining moment