I just finished a paraprofessionals workshop. Sometimes things related to my current job hit a little too close to home.....
This story is one of those things, but instead of being saddened by it, I appreciated the way it verbalizes something I've never been able to. My personal experience with autism.
Welcome to Holland
When you're going to have a baby, it's like you're planning a vacation to Italy. You're all excited. You get a whole bunch of guidebooks, you learn a few phrases in Italian so you can get around, and then it comes time to pack your bags and head for the airport-for Italy.
Only when you land, the stewardess says, "Welcome to Holland." You look at one another in disbelief and shock, saying, "Holland? What are you talking about? I signed up for Italy!"
But they explain there's been a change of plans, and there you must stay. "But I don't know anything about Holland! I don't want to stay!", you say.
But you do stay. You go out and buy some new guidebooks, you learn some new phrases and you meet people you never knew existed. The important thing is that you are not in Italy or some filthy, plague-infested slum full of pestilence and famine. You are simply in a different place than you had planned. It's slower paced than Italy, but after you've been there a little while and have had a chance to catch your breath, you begin to discover Holland has windmills. Holland has tulips. Holland has Rembrandts.
But everyone else you know is busy coming and going from Italy. They're all bragging about what a great time they had there and for the rest of your life you will say, "Yes, that's what I had planned." The pain of that will never, ever go away.
You have to accept that pain because the loss of that dream the loss of that plan, is a very significant loss. But if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you will never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things about Holland.
I don't know who wrote that story but I appreciate it.
I've always talked (and blogged) about so many things unabashedly, but for some reason my personal experience with Autism and I mean my really personal experience, the one that happened inside me, has been tucked away in a corner of my mind somewhere and I rarely, if ever, access it. In fact just saying these words fills me with fear. Fear that I will present my feelings incorrectly, fear that my son will read these words someday and think that I resent him, fear that talking about it will make me feel it again. But I think maybe I need to talk about it, to pull the feelings out of the corner and examine them, deal with them, and, most importantly, let others benefit from them. So this story opened the door. It reminded me of the grief that I experienced (when I allowed myself). The nights that I knelt all alone at the foot of his bed while he slept, my fist against my chest, begging God to take it away from him. The knowledge that it wouldn't be taken away, and the overwhelming despair I felt looking down the road I knew we would travel down. There were fears that I never spoke aloud, like fearing he would never speak at all, and that I would never know what he felt or if he was really happy or okay. And the fear that even now, with my son so happy and well-adjusted, that I experience anytime he even has a sort-of bad day. It can be paralyzing. Wondering if we are going backwards, if he will pull out of it. He always does........ but the fear remains.
So for all that I can say that I have learned to enjoy Holland, my son is my windmill, he is my Rembrandt, and I would not trade him for anything. But I also want those in the same situation to understand that the pain is real and okay to feel. A woman I love and respect (who has two severely autistic children) told me once, "You have to soldier on... but every soldier drops their sword sometimes."
My story is a happy one. My son is doing the best he has ever done, exsquisitly is the word I want to use, and maybe it is time to air out my fears and hand my son back to the God I know created him.
