Help!! looking for a quote

Is this what you are looking for Tracy?

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

Wow... I never came across that. I guess I went to Holland and learned to celebrate after mourning for a couple of months. And in the end, Holland was just different and continues to be different, not worse, not better, different. Glad you shared, Shelley.

Is that just a poem or a book and who wrote it?

Hi Shelley!!! So good to see you!

Hugs, Sabrina in Kentucky

a good friend is a life long treasure

Wow! That's awesome! I wish someone had shared something like this with us when my nephew, Jason, was little. Now that he's an adult it still has the same meaning and impact but it surely would have made a big difference in the way things were viewed when he was young. Thanks so much for sharing this with us! Susan

Ty Shelley! This is exactly it. I lost in when I swapped computers, and somehow no other thing will work on a special page for Bella :)

TY!!!

Woohooo imma off to Holland (pssttt.... got any tulip pp patterns?? :P~~) Glad to see your around btw :)

Tracy

Celebrations much more fun, i reckon its much better too! If it wasnt for Bellas, "issues" she would not be the adorable girl she is to me now :)

Tracy

the copy i had was anon mc hth!

Glad i could help! I resemble that story every day!

MC this is who wrote it By Emily Perl Kingsley

it is a poem

wow im glad you have the name of the writer too! Looks better than writing anon next to it LOL

Tracy