Welcome To Holland

I good friend of mind recently gave me Chicken Soup for a Mother's Soul. There is a story that hits home to me and I thought I would share it. We are currently at Riley with Luke for some check up and will update you in the next few days.

        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 wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some hand 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 by new guidebooks. And you must learn and 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 that 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 have 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...and Holland

                                                                                Emily Perl Kingsley