holland

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 guidebooks and make wonderful plans. The
Coliseum, the Michelangelo David, the gondolas in Venice! You may even learn
some handy phrases in Italian.

It's all very exciting.

After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You may 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, 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 guidebooks. And you must learn a whole new
language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have
met had you gone to Italy.

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 can catch your breath, you look
around and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills. 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've had there. And for the rest of your
life, you will say, "Yes, that was where I was supposed to go. That's what I had
planned."

The pain of that will never go away because the loss of that dream is a significant
loss.

But, if you spend your life mourning over 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.