Raising A Child With A Disability

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, gondolas. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very Exciting!

After several months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack you 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 has 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 pace.

So, you 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 have never 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. You begin to notice that Holland has Windmills, Holland has tulips, and Holland 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 experience will never, ever, ever go away. 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.

Author unknown

Well, I hope you enjoyed that wonderful

description !

You can also click the next button to read a sweet poem that was sent to me which I but on a background for others to view.