Sandy - posted on 11/21/2009 ( 3 moms have responded )
17
15
I am a mother of a 15 year old special needs girl. I found this "Dear Abbe" article many years ago and it has helped me through some difficult times. Here it is: Welcome to Holland. I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability-to try to help people who have not shared the 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 your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. Michelangelo's "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 flight attendant 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 guidebooks. You must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new gtoup 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 look around, you notice that Holland has windmills, Holland has tulips, Holland even has Rembrandts. But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy, and they're all bragging about a wonderufl 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 where I had planned." And the pain of that will never, ever, go away, because the loss of a dream is a 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 hope this helps any parent of a special needs child because I have come to absolutely LOVE Holland.
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