The Entire Family Matters
FRA offers workshops, support groups and a newsletter for parents of children with disabilities. Siblings can participate in support groups of their own. We also offer two sibling newsletters.
THANK YOU TO OUR SUPPORTERS
Family Support groups, workshops and sibling programs are funded in part by the Monmouth County Board of Freeholders, Monmouth Park Charities, Red Bank Rotary, Knights of Columbus-Prince of Peace Council No. 5903 & the Toby Bell Family.
WELCOME TO HOLLAND
by Emily Perl Kingsley
When you are 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 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 have not 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 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 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.
