Welcome to Holland

Everyone is dealt their own hand. I do believe what life bestows on you is somewhat predetermined. We all have an intended journey, however the paths we choose to get to the end are left up to free will. We all know life can be hard and finding the good in things can be extremely difficult. There is good in everything, though. You just have to be strong enough to search for it.

I have one sibling. A younger brother. Chronologically he's 30 years old, but mentally he's 8. He had a stroke at birth which led to a multitude of physical as well as emotional/psychological problems. This journey has been a rough one. We've probably taken many wrong paths along are way, but we are blessed enough that with each new day, brings a new choice of paths. It's so hard for anyone living outside of my family's world to understand the grief and the challenges, but it's also hard for people to see the gift we have been given.

The following prose was originally written by a woman named Emily Perl Kingsley, and I think no one could have done a better job of describing what the foundation of our life is like. I wanted to share it.

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.

Yes, a loss it is, and there is grieving. There is grieving every day in different ways, by each member of our family. We have no choice, though, other then to keep going. Some moments brim over with Tulips and windmills and at other times the sky gets cloudy and it rains. We just have to tell ourselves, you can't have rainbows without rain.