Welcome to Holland

You all know that I am super-proud of my children. I love them all dearly and unconditionally. I chose to be a mom. I chose to parent these particular children. That makes me different than the majority of people I interact with on a regular basis. I've also discovered that because of the way I became a mom, I am not allowed to feel sorry for myself for having children with special needs. This reality hit me today while talking to another mother who has a child with down syndrome. This is how it went:

Me: "Alyssa has been such a handful lately. It makes me sad that not only does she have the prenatal drug and alcohol exposure to deal with, but the down syndrome too. Sometimes I wish for both of us that she could be "normal."

My friend: "Are you serious? You CHOSE her! It's not like you gave birth to her. Those are the mothers you should feel sorry for. They didn't choose this life."

Me (dumbstruck and ready to cry): "I'm not allowed to miss the "what-could have been?"

My friend: "Duh. Then why did you even adopt a kid with special needs? Sometimes I think people who adopt like that think they are going to save the world. I don't mean that about YOU! It's just who would choose this life? You don't get to complain, Kathy. There are no lost dreams for you about your kids. You chose this."

I wanted to SCREAM! But, I didn't. I politely disagreed and then found an excuse to get off of the phone. I hung up, walked into Allie's room and hugged her and cried. I don't care what anybody else says. I'll love her unconditionally for who she is now, and in my heart I'll still ache for the challenges she faces daily because of what she experienced in the womb prenatally. I will always love that "little something extra" God gave to her ... without it, she wouldn't be my Alliekins! But I'll admit to being guilty of wishing for more for her.

My best friend has two daughters Allie's age. I adore her girls and absolutely love hearing about all that they say and do. We've been through the adoptions of all of our children together so she "gets" how I feel. But sometimes my heart aches for my daughter when I listen to the current escapades of "K" and "M". I want to have stories like that for Allie. Instead I can share a poop-smearing story (Allie takes her diapers off at night and plays in it) or a little anecdote about how she rubbed her plate of syrup on her ponytails right before the preschool bus showed up. Of course we have fun stories too, but more often than not it's about the challenges.

So tell me. Am I horrible for claiming that "loss" that birth mothers experience when they have children with special needs? Am I allowed to feel that? In the end, I'm a mom. I have all of the same emotions as other mothers. And honestly, I envy the one thing they have that I don't. They have the comfort of knowing they carried their precious baby for 9 months. They have that biological connection that I will never have. Like Isaac reminds me, "Mommy, I didn't grow under your heart. I grew in it!"

Below you will find a poem titled "Welcome to Holland." It was written by a parent of a child with a disability.

"Welcome to Holland"
By Emily Perl Kingsley, 1987. All rights reserved.

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.

Until Tomorrow,

Kathy ... Loving My Blessings Unconditionally ... I Love Holland