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 your wonderful plans: the Coliseum, Michelangelo's 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 guidebooks. 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 many never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things about Holland.
Re: Welcome to Holland
Thanks for sharing.
I didn't expect this...but...this made me cry
Especially the part about bragging...that's still a struggle for me.
Me too.
Thank you for posting this. I had never seen it but this brightened my day.
I apoligize that this offended you and you feel you need to belittle others' feelings and situations. My son does have a life threatening condition and is not expected to live past age 10. But it did work for me and helps me to explain to others EXACTLY how I feel. It really has nothing to do with him, but everything to do with how I feel left behind.
The corny stuff about finding a way to enjoy it agree is crap, most of the time, but the feeling of being dropped off in a place you didn't expect is the main point here.
I did not expect you to break it down and explain how Wrong this article is.
BFP 7/7/08, M/C 7/8/08, BFP 9/23/08, M/C 9/24/08, BFP 11/2/08 TWINS!,
Lost Our 10 month old Baby Boy Rowan 3/12/10 BFP 8/25/10