Holland?

I found this...and it makes alot of sence to me so I thought I would share. I know alot of people disagree with it...but I like it, so deal with it. :)

-Barbie

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 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 guidebooks 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 some
horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and
disease. It's just a different place.




So you must go out and 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 and you
catch your breath, you look around, and you begin to 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 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.





Written by Emily Perl Kingsley