For anyone who has a child outside the box will understand and hopefully enjoy this piece written by Carol Turkington.
Welcome to Holland
When you’re going to have a baby, it’s like you’re planning a vacation to Italy. You’re all excited. You get a whole bunch of guidebooks and you learn a few phrases in Italian so you can get around. When it comes time, you pack your bags and head for the airport — for Italy.
Only, when you land, the stewardess says, “Welcome to Holland.”
You look at one another in disbelief and shock and say, “Holland? What are you talking about? I signed up for Italy!”
But they explain there’s been a change of plans and you’ve landed in Holland, where you must stay. “But I don’t know anything about Holland! I don’t want to stay!”
But you do stay. You go out and buy some new guidebooks. You learn some new phrases and you meet people you never knew existed. The important thing is that you are not in a lowly, plague-infested slum, full of pestilence and famine. You are simply in a different place than you had planned. It’s slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy, but after you’ve been there a little while and you have a chance to catch your breath, you begin to discover that Holland has windmills. Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.
But everyone else you know is busy coming and going from Italy. They’re all bragging about what a great time they had there, and for the rest of your life you will say, ”Yes, that’s where I was going. That’s what I had planned.”
The pain of that will never, ever go away.
You have to accept that pain because the loss of that dream, the loss of that plan is a very, very significant loss. But if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn’t get to Italy, you will never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things about Holland.
Holland for us has been an interesting journey, one we feel very lucky to be experiencing. I have learnt to slow down, and take in all the beauty that life has to offer. One thing that still concerns me is that during every workshop, or training I attend the same common theme keeps raising its head, and that is once you have a diagnosis then what? I have decided to put a page out there to assist people know what they are entitled to, and whats out there...It will be titled "Children with a diagnosis". It will start out only covering 0-6 year olds as our son is six, although as I do socialise with other parents I will put whatever I can find out, and more. Please feel free to add, or advise if something has changed, or no longer available, or incorrect, so we can ensure this page remains relevant and up to date...
Yours truly
Writbitz...
