Welcome to Holland...

My friend Ryan sent this to me this week. She and I have the bond of having beautiful children with multiple disabilities. This spoke volumes to me and I couldn't quit thinking about it, so I just had to share it with all of you...this pretty much sums it up...in case you ever wondered...

Welcome to Holland
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 are 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 flight attendant 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 has been a change in the flight plan. They have landed in Holland and there you must stay.

The importance of this 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 and buy new guide books. You must learn a whole new language. You will meet a whole new group of people you would have never met.

It’s just a different place. It’s slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you have been there for awhile and you catch your breath, you look around…and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills…Holland has tulips…Holland has Rembrandts.

But…everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy. They are all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there…and for the rest of your life, you will say, “Yes, that is where I was supposed to go. That is what I had planned.”

And the pain of that dream 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.