Welcome To Holland
This arrived in my inbox today, and I thought it was beautiful (typos and all). I'm not a parent of a child with a disability, but I am a parent and I was a child with a disability, and I can't imagine how my parents got to be so strong.-
WELCOME TO HOLLAND
By Emily Perl Kingsley
I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability - to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It's like this......
When you're going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip - to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting.
After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, "Welcome to Holland."
"Holland?!?" you say. "What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I'm supposed to be in Italy. All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy."
But there's been a change in the flight plan. They've landed in Holland and there you must stay.
The important thing is that they haven't taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It's just a different place.
So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.
It's just a different place. It's slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you've been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around.... and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills....and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.
But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy... and they're all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say "Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned."
And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away... because the loss of that dream is a very very significant loss.
But... if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things ... about Holland.
Labels: Arthritis/Fibromyalgia, From My Inbox
posted by Lindsay @ 2:23 PM
5 Comments:
Thanks for sharing!
I guess many people get to other locations than the one they were dreaming of. Great thoughts of what occurs with change in direction.
The salsa sounds like fun for both of you:) You must have a few aches today.
I really like that.
The difference is that you can come home from a wonderful trip to Italy while the people who go to Holland, well, they stay there and life will never be the same. I had a "disabled" child once but she's grown into a beautiful, capable, smart, self-managed, awesome young woman. But as her mom, I still feel like I have one foot in Holland sometimes. Pretty stretchy, eh?
That was amazing. So well written and well put.
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