# Poem for mums of disabled children!!



## DanielleM

I absolutley love this poem and it describes raising a disabled child down to a T for me. I just wanted to share with all you amazing mums that are doing a great job raising our kids!!!

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 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.


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## WW1

Thank you for sharing this - it brought a tear to my eye :hugs:


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## Nathyrra

Someone sent me this when I first got my sons diagnosis of DS. It makes alot of sense. And I truly only found peace when I stopped mourning what I thought I should have had, and excepted and saw the beauty in what gift I was sent instead. x


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## x Michelle x

thats so lovely x


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## educationist

Really gud!!!
Although im not a mom yet but i can feel for other moms
really like it


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## Midnight_Fairy

I love this poem!


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## DanielleM

Just bumping this to give mums of disabled children a little boost!! :hugs:


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## Midnight_Fairy

Thanks, I like to read it now and then xx


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## Menelly

I do love this one. I also love Jim Sinclair's "Don't mourn for us" for parents of spectrum kids. (Google it if you have a child on the spectrum and haven't read it.)


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