And then part way through life’s journey, you wake up one day and someone 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 plan. You have landed in Holland and there you must stay. You are devastated. This was not supposed to happen.
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 slowly you begin to notice that Holland has windmills....and Holland has tulips; Holland even has Rembrandts ...and Holland has the most delicious cheese.
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 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.
So welcome to Holland… once you adapt, its not so bad really.
(Adapted from a piece by Emily Perl Kingsley who 26 years ago wrote about what is like to have a child with a profound disability.)
