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 a fabulous vacation trip to Italy. You buy a bunch of guidebooks and make your wonderful plans-the coliseum, the Michaelangelo 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 stewardist comes and says, "Welcome to Holland."
"Holland?" What do you mean Holland? I signed up for Italy! I'm supposed to be in Italy! All my life, I have dreamed of Italy!"
But there's been a change of plan. They've landed in Holland and there you must stay. The important thing is they haven't taken you 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 guidebooks. And you must learn a whole new language and 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've 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 even has rembrants.
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 go away because the loss of that dream is a very significant loss. But if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't go to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things about Holland.
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 a fabulous vacation trip to Italy. You buy a bunch of guidebooks and make your wonderful plans-the coliseum, the Michaelangelo 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 stewardist comes and says, "Welcome to Holland."
"Holland?" What do you mean Holland? I signed up for Italy! I'm supposed to be in Italy! All my life, I have dreamed of Italy!"
But there's been a change of plan. They've landed in Holland and there you must stay. The important thing is they haven't taken you 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 guidebooks. And you must learn a whole new language and 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've 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 even has rembrants.
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 go away because the loss of that dream is a very significant loss. But if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't go to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things about Holland.
I found this the other day on a MD site. I think its a wonderful way to describe what I feel. This in not what I had planned. When you have a baby you do dream of all the wonderful things that life has to offer. Then sometimes you get thrown a curve ball. In this case it's more like a big punch in the gut that knocks you off your feet. The truth is not matter how much I accept Austin's diagnosis and our future the pain of losing "how it was supposed to be" is always there. It probably always will be. I just hope that on this journey I can learn to let go of that pain and know that for whatever reason this is what God has planned for us and learn to embrace Holland and all it has to offer.
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