I love a good metaphor.....

I found this and I thought it was a powerful metaphor. I know it's odd to use a post to just exhibit someone else's work but I include it to show my respect for how it provoked my thinking, not having a disabled child myself....

Welcome to Holland
by Emily Perl Kingsley

I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a disabled child. To try and 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, Michelangelo's 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. All my life I have 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 never would have met.

It's just a different place. It's slower paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy but after you have 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 Rembrandt.

But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy and they are all bragging about what a wonderful time they have had there. And for the rest of your life you will say, "Yes that was where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned."

And 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.

Comments

  1. Ken Devine19 April 2010 at 13:44

    I agree Molly P...it is very powerful.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Eric19 April 2010 at 13:55

    Never met a phor I didn't like... wasn't that a Will Rogers quote?

    So in the UK, Holland is like our Guatemala then?

    ReplyDelete
  3. jim_greenan19 April 2010 at 14:49

    I love that...have often thought about having a disabled child and how it feels, and felt at the moment of birth.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Mark In Mayenne19 April 2010 at 18:39

    It was well put, I think

    ReplyDelete
  5. Carol23 April 2010 at 13:58

    That is extremely powerful!!

    *goes off to have a think about it*

    C x

    ReplyDelete
  6. Ken Devine29 April 2010 at 09:55

    Where are you Molly P, there is something missing when you aren't around.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Molly Potter29 April 2010 at 20:07

    Hi Ken D,
    That's very kind of you to say.
    I think i might be a winter blogger although I can't be for sure until next winter.

    I become much busier in the summer - like most people but I will try and pop into Blogsville every now and then
    x

    ReplyDelete
  8. Ken Devine3 May 2010 at 08:35

    You busy! Now why am I not surprised?
    I look forward to you popping!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

I LOVE comments......

Popular posts from this blog

Breaking the blog spell...

My beautifully captivating and mesmerising big sister cast a spell on me. It was a spell that would make me sit in up in the clouds and write a blog every single day...mostly for her benefit - as she dutifully and kindly read and commented on each one. Being easily coaxed into most things and liking the idea of a blog meant this spell was fine...for a while. Then.....I was sitting minding my own business (I look quite funny when I do that - most people do) when a huge green common-sense elf wearing red hotpants came and waved his wand at me declaring, "Writing a blog every day when you work full time, have two youngish children and a million projects on the go at any one time, is a little silly. You can waffle on and on about just about anything and do have about forty draft blogs saved ready to run, but it's probably best you aim more for quality than quantity and only write about slightly more fully formed ideas! After all, less IS more." I was released -although I fear...
Read more

51 quirky features of Norwich Cathedral that you can go and find

Image
I have always loved Norwich Cathedral as it is beautiful and atmospheric. But it turns out that it is also loaded with a hotchpotch of history as building started in 1096. The more I learn about it, the more fascinated I become. So here are my recommendations for what to look out for should you ever visit the cathedral. 1) The Elizabethan grave of Thomas Gooding Thomas was a mason of the cathedral. He paid a fair amount of money to be buried upright because he believed this would give him an advantage come judgement day. At the base of his memorial is a typical of its time, poignantly death-focused inscription: 'All you that do this pass bye Remember death for you must dye As you are now even so was I And as I am so shall you be Thomas Gooding here do staye Wayting for God's judgement day' If you look at the skeleton, you will see there is poor knowledge of anatomy. 2) The grave of the baby that died before she was born . I have been told that this is be...
Read more

Anal Retention Test

Image
I was clearing out some old files on my computer and came across this. I wrote it in about 1999 (back when people still wrote cheques) predominantly to take the p*** out of a teaching colleague that was the opposite end of this particular spectrum to me! He took it as the silly, light-hearted bit of fun it was meant to be, but he did actually score nearly full marks. We are still friends and he's a headteacher now. Just shows you how far a bit of anal retention can take one. *************************************************** DEFINITION A popular term for “anal retentive personality,” a personality marked by excessive orderliness, extreme meticulousness, and often suspicion and reserve. According to psychoanalysis, an anal personality is formed in early childhood as a result of efforts to control bowel movements. *************************************************** Now tell me, does anal retention *increase with age? *really make life easier? *have very strong links to the need to b...
Read more