Welcome to Holland...

The following essay was written by Emily Kingsley.  I find it to be the heart of what we are trying to figure out on this new journey, and I re-read it often when I find that tailspin heading out to sea.  And it's the inspiration for the title of this blog.

Welcome to Holland

by Emily 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 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 some horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It's just a different place.

So you must go out and buy a new guidebook. 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."

The pain of that will never, 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.

New year, new journey, new blog...

It has been just over 4 months since my son was officially diagnosed with autism.

But it has been longer since we suspected it, since I worried about it and felt inadequate and helpless, since I felt him slipping further away from me and yet powerless to stop it.

But now we know.  The diagnosis is heartbreaking and validating and anxiety-inducing and a relief all at the same time.  No one ever wants to have to hear that about her child, but it is the diagnosis that is now making it possible for us to get him the help he needs...the same diagnosis that has sent me into a tailspin, grasping at the grief process and trying to navigate this new territory.  Without a map.  Without a guide book.  Away from family.

I understand logically that the diagnosis is ultimately a good thing, but my heart is just taking awhile to catch up to my head.  And that's a lot of what this blog is about.  The heart divide.  My head and heart rarely truly being in the same place but working towards that synthesis.

I can't promise that it will always be uplifting and inspiring...but I promise it will always be honest.