"Welcome to Holland"

By Emily Perl Kingsley, 1987. All rights reserved.

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.

***This is an exceptional writing. My mom went to a conference and one of the speakers talked about this woman. This not only pertains to you if you have a child with a disability but to every part or our lives that didn't or won't go the way we planned. We plan our entire lives to go to Italy and we think that is exactly how it will be but alas, it is not our choice where the plane lands.

Everyone that you come in contact with is struggling with something you may never know about. Let's face it, sometimes it seems like everyone else's plane has landed in Italy and we are the only ones in Holland. That is not true. Sometimes we feel like we are the only ones who are experiencing pain, suffering and trials. The only way to know that we are not the only ones experiencing something difficult is if all of us wore signs around our necks that said what our struggle or trial is that we are trying to endure. Surely, that is not how it happens. I think we'd all be a lot nicer to one another if we could read from everyone's sign and know what they are battling.

Let us not forget that we can be a little nicer and that we can serve others. You may never know the impact you have on someone's life. You may never know why you were brought in contact with that person, but surely The Lord knows and that is why we need to listen to the promptings of the spirit. That someone may have an impact on you and change your life when all along you thought you were doing something for them.***