I don't remember exactly when I first read Welcome To Holland, Emily Perl Kingsley's essay about the journey of raising a kid with special needs. I do know Max was pretty young, and that I was deeply moved by it. Welcome To Holland gets passed around a lot online; I'm sure you've seen it at some point. What Emily wrote:
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 Sistine Chapel, Gondolas. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It’s all very exciting. After several 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 guidebooks. 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. You begin to notice that Holland has windmills. Holland has tulips. And 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 experience will never, ever, ever, go away. 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.
When Max was around three, a newspaper ran an article about Emily and her son, Jason, who has Down Syndrome. On impulse I picked up the phone, tracked down her work number and got her on the line. Stalker-like, yeah, but she was kind enough to spend a few minutes chatting and encouraging me to have hope. She even gave me her email.
A friend of mine recently heard Emily speak at an event and gushed about her. So I emailed Emily to tell her that, and ask if she'd be willing to answer some questions. She is!
So, what would you like to ask the author of Welcome To Holland? Leave your q below; I'll gather them, send them off to her and run her responses here.
Photo/Oldebekn
When Max was around three, a newspaper ran an article about Emily and her son, Jason, who has Down Syndrome. On impulse I picked up the phone, tracked down her work number and got her on the line. Stalker-like, yeah, but she was kind enough to spend a few minutes chatting and encouraging me to have hope. She even gave me her email.
A friend of mine recently heard Emily speak at an event and gushed about her. So I emailed Emily to tell her that, and ask if she'd be willing to answer some questions. She is!
So, what would you like to ask the author of Welcome To Holland? Leave your q below; I'll gather them, send them off to her and run her responses here.
Photo/Oldebekn
