Welcome to Holland

At DeeDee's first birthday party, a very good friend, whom I had met in hospital whilst her daughter battled Meduloblastoma, handed me a piece of paper and said "read it later" 

I finally got around to reading it the following day, Dee's first birthday party was pretty hectic, we had a lot to celebrate with her reaching the age of one and us not knowing how many more parties we would get to enjoy with her, and with us sharing the news of my pregnancy too. 

Anyway this is what it said:

WELCOME TO HOLLAND

by

Emily Perl Kingsley.

c1987 by Emily Perl Kingsley. 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.

 

So I have spent the past four years in Holland and although I still often mourn the loss of Italy I have discovered so many amazing things about Holland. It really is beautiful here. You see DeeDee and our unexpected trip to Holland have taught me to see the beauty in every day, to never waste a minute, to take a step back from the bad and search for the good! Holland has taught me to be strong, it has shown me who I am I inside and I can only ever be grateful for that! Some days my heart longs for the simplistic beauty of Italy and I am learning that that is ok, it is ok to be sad about what I have lost, to mourn the loss of what could have been doesn't make me any less grateful for what I have! 

Eni 

xx