Welcome to Holland

There is a lots of "inspirational" stuff about disabilities that I find quite frankly rather insipid, particularly the religious stuff. This piece, however, I have found doesn't; it resonates well with my own experiences of disabled children.

The thing I suppose I like is that it isn't preachy, it doesn't say, like some pretty awful stuff does, that this was intended, or still worse, what God intended - there's one about "The Special Mother" by Erma Bombeck that I absolutely dislike, it means well but is so patronising, smug and self-satisfied. The message that Bombeck gives is - you are special and saintly, and how do you know? Because you have been given the gift of a handicapped child by God. It is well meaning but totally insensitive, and the idea of God that it portrays is pretty dreadful, and a complete misreading of John 9:1-3; it is too easy an answer. As Rowan Williams said "Every single random, accidental death is something that should upset a faith bound up with comfort and ready answers", and the same can be said of disabilities.

But this piece is much, much better. This one is more akin to a myth, it tells a story, and does not belittle the pain, which so many others do.

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Welcome to Holland

By Emily Pearl 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 guidebooks and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some bandy 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 flight attendant comes 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 guidebooks. 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.'

"And the pain of that will never, ever, 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."