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.
- Emily Perl Kingsley, 1987, "Welcome to Holland"
So you come back from Holland amidst envy for everyone who returns from Italy and talking about Italy. Like, what the heck, Holland wasn't too bad once you removed the lenses of pessimism. But still, its one thing to be optimistic and another thing to engage in self-consolation but still believe deep in your heart that Italy was the place for you to go.
We go to different places for a reason. And once you realised this, you will begin to see how significant it was that Holland was the road less travelled, and that you were one of those who travelled this road.
As you sit at home looking at how the rest brag about their journeys in Italy, you will be able notice something others do not. You will be able to notice the ones who didn't go to Italy, you will be able to notice the ones who did not fit in.
While others are engrossed in their conversations about how beautiful Italy was, you go to the sides of the ones who were left out, and tell them about how beautiful Holland was.
You will help open their eyes to the beauty of their own travels, you will be the one who help remove the lenses of pessimism on their eyes.
You realise that it was of no coincidence that the flight plan was changed. It was for a purpose. Everything is planned. Everything is in control. You landed in Holland and returned thus for a mission.
Not everyone will be able to go to Italy. Many others get their flight plans changed as well. These are the people who need someone by their side. Not the ones from Italy. And you, from Holland, with your experiences, you are the one.
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