Welcome to Holland

I touched on the previous post about Welcome to Holland - a popular analogy in the special needs community. When I first read it, I cried my eyes out. I didn't like it. Who wants to go to Holland? No one would chose to go there but when you are taken there unexpectedly, there isn't much you can do about it. People have said to me in the past that they couldn't cope in my situation or they couldn't do it. I say of course you could, there is no choice. It's not like buying a new car and it breaking down. I can't take L back to a garage and say "sorry, there is a problem with this one". He isn't a piece of faulty merchandise that I can return and get a new shiny one in his place. Not that I would want to of course, even if I could. Having additional needs doesn't make me love him any less. It does the complete opposite. I love him even more. I just want to run away with him sometimes. Wrap him in cotton wool and protect him from society and its prejudice and ignorance. His autism is part of him and he wouldn't be who he is without it. A lovely mummy who I met on our journey said once that she wanted to run away and sell coconuts on a beach somewhere. Doesn't sound like a bad idea sometimes. I still sometimes cry when I read Welcome to Holland. It describes what it's like to be mum to a special little person more beautifully than I ever could. It touches me every time I read it. I used to sometimes look at L and wonder what he would be like if he didn't have autism but I don't let my mind wander there anymore. It's painful and pointless and besides, what's so good about Italy anyway?


Here it is:


Welcome to Holland by Emily Perl Kingsley


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.