Welcome To Holland
Welcome To Holland
Welcome To Holland by Emily Perl Kingsley
© 1987 by Emily Perl Kingsley . All rights reserved . Reprinted with permission of the author .
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 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 ' 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 .
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