Our Trip to Holland...

"Welcome to Holland"

Written by Emily Perl Kingsley

Adapted by Ron Black

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, and the gondolas in Venice.  You may learn some interesting 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.  When 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 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, 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 Holand has tulips.  Holland even has Rembrandts.

And while everyone you know is busy bragging about Italy, you will say "that's okay, I went to Holland." 

Although the loss of that dream is a significant loss, 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.