How Parents of Children with Special Needs Feel

I am very thankful to have found this in another parent's website. I feel exactly the same way as Emily and I hope that this entry could somehow help you guys understand, and maybe empathize, with what parents like us are going through.

I can honestly say it is a privilege to be entrusted by God with someone as special as my son. It has been a wonderful journey for our family and we'll keep on finding ways to look at the positive sides as we continue to have fun with our James :) 

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Welcome To Holland

By Emily Perl 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 guide books and make wonderful plans. The coliseum, Michelangelo's David. The gondolas of Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting.

After a few 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 of plans," says the stewardess. "They've landed in Holland and there you must stay."

The important thing is you haven't landed in a horrible, disgusting, filthy place full of pestilence, famine and disease. It's just a different place.

photo borrowed from tripsite.com

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 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 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 the 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 that pain will never, ever go away because the loss of that dream was 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 and lovely things about Holland.