Welcome to Holland

"Welcome to Holland" is an essay, written in 1987 by Emily Perl Kingsley, about having a child with Down Syndrome, though it is applicable to many other birth defects, and is given by many hospitals and child-care professionals to new parents of special-needs children.

The essay, written in the second person, employs a metaphor of excitement for a vacation to Italy that becomes a massive disappointment when the reader's plane lands instead in 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."

The metaphor is that the trip to Italy is a typical birth and child-raising experience, and that the trip to Holland is the experiencing of having and raising a special-needs child.

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."

In the end, however, an effort is made to express that the "trip" is still well worth it:

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.

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