Holland - a poem I love

tinytoes

Well-Known Member
Joined
Nov 15, 2010
Messages
7,186
Reaction score
0
I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with disability - to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to imagine how it would feel.
It is like this...

When you're going to have a baby, it is 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 of Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It is all very exciting.

After months of anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bag 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 am supposed to be in Italy. All my life I have dreamed of going to Italy! '.

But there has been a change in flight plan, they have landed in Holland and there you must stay. The important thing is that they have not taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It is just a different place.

So you must go out and buy new guidebooks. And you must learn a new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met before. It is just a different place. It's slower paced than Italy. It's less flashy than Italy. But after you have 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, and Holland even has Rembrandts.

But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy and they are all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life you will say, 'Yes, that is where I was supposed to go, That's where I had planned'.

And 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 go to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things about Holland.




I love this
 
Aw that is lovely! Really thought provoking too xx

Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk 2
 
I think it was written by a parent of a child with autsim but I can sort of relate to it at times x
 
Very interesting and lovely way of putting things. x
 
We read this time and time again when we found out Charlie (unborn) had downs, you can't appreciate it until you are there, as Charlie is only just showing us his timetable of development is not quite what other babies are
So only now am I reading again and understanding it better
And it's so true when you see people going Italy every week there is a bit of jealousy there
And nobody understands until they have been to holland how we feel
Hope that makes sense :)
 
Tweety needs to read this.

Cay has no disability, but I can totally understand the meaning of it, just not the experience.

It's lovely xx
 
I love this poem! Its really weird, as I shared it with a few friends on here the other day!

When Aaron was 4 days old, I phoned DS Scotland and I sobbed and sobbed and sobbed. I was devastated that he had DS, I was grieving for the baby I thought I deserved, I was angry that I was being punished and confused because I didn't know what I did to deserve it!

The lady on the other end of the phone, listened to me crying for the longest time. Then she read this out to me. It was a turning point, it put everything into perspective.

I love Holland, its great here. I hope I get to visit Italy one day too :D
 
Sometimes I sit and stare at lily and think about her future and think .. I didn't ask for this , this isn't my plan. Then I read that piece and think that what I have is different to what I planned but no less perfect.
 
Sometimes I sit and stare at lily and think about her future and think .. I didn't ask for this , this isn't my plan. Then I read that piece and think that what I have is different to what I planned but no less perfect.

Perfectly put my love xx
 
Awwww lovely poem. Even though I sometimes struggle to define Evan as having a disability it was certainly not Italy we landed in. But I've never been to Italy or Holland so I'll make the most of Holland and Italy can wait :) xxx
 
Hi amyQ are you still in Northants? (On your profile) I'm in Northampton x
 
Aww this is lovely, I often feel sad about Harry having beckwith wiedermann syndrome and I look at other babies that have perfectly matching limbs and can't help feeling jealous! Then he does something amazing and I realise I have another kind of perfection and I wouldnt change him for the world x
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Members online

No members online now.

Forum statistics

Threads
473,572
Messages
4,654,624
Members
110,012
Latest member
lauramayne90
Back
Top