Arriving in Holland

... & happy to be here.

Autism arriving in the family is like arriving in Holland when you'd actually expected to tip up in Italy.

"Welcome to Holland" was written by Emily Perl Kingsley, in her words "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."

I came across this early in our journey & it's sentiment resonated strongly with me so I'm sharing it now."

A point of note though ~ with autism & other 'hidden' developmental conditions, there is no announcement from the stewardess before you disembark the 'plane so you continue on your journey still thinking you've arrived in Italy, trying to implement the plans you've made for Italy & to speak Italian, until someone, somewhere, years down the line, finally recognises your struggle & explains that you're not actually in Italy ~ you've been in Holland all along! 

And, for the record, I feel blessed to have arrived in Holland.  It's not as easy or relaxing a trip as I'd planned (someone always has to keep a finger in the dyke) ~ but having settled, & as I continue to explore, I've found it to be a fascinating destination.

Welcome to Holland 

by Emily Perl Kingsley circa 1987

When you're going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip ~ to Italy.  You buy a bunch of guidebooks & 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 & off you go.  Several hours later, the 'plane lands.

The stewardess comes in & 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.  You've landed in Holland & there you must stay.

The important thing is that they haven't taken you to some horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine & disease.  It's just a different place.

So you must go out & buy a new guidebook.  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 & you catch your breath, you look around, & you begin to notice that Holland has windmills, Holland has tulips, Holland even has Rembrandts.

But everyone you know is busy coming & going from Italy, & 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."

The pain of that will never, ever go away because the loss of that 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.

End.

via Pinterest (original source unknown)