In one of the Spina Bifida groups that I'm in on Facebook someone recently posted this essay and I thought I'd share it. "Welcome to Holland" was originally written by Emily Perl Kingsley about raising a child with special needs. I hear that it's given out a lot to new parents of a child with special needs although we never received it.
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 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. 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.
I'm not entirely sure how I feel about this essay. I like it, but I don't. I think it's a good analogy and has a positive message, but is it entirely accurate? I'm going to have to say no. I honestly think that if I'd been given something like this before Jackson was born, I would've felt resentful for receiving it. It would've ranked right up there with hearing "Everything will be okay". Well-meaning, but not helpful at all. I'm sure it would've been given to me with good intentions, but it would've made me feel like crap for having the feelings I was dealing with at that time. So, I'm actually glad that I didn't read it until now.
While I was looking for more info on this essay, I also stumbled upon another version, or revision if you will, of this and I want to share that too. It was written by Dana Nieder and you can check it out here. I think I like "Amsterdam International" better. It hit home to all of the thoughts that were in my head and the feelings I was dealing with at the time.
For the record: I like living in Holland. It has its perks, like a little boy named Jackson :)
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