Do you feel this way as a parent to a disabled child?

I found this poem a little while ago and at the time my daughter had just been diagnosed. I felt I could really relate to it, and I have kept it on my laptop since.

Welcome to Holland”

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 pa
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.

How do you feel reading this? Am i strange for feeling so strongly about it, I am 21 and my daughter has optic nerve hypoplasia
Chili~ indeed it was her that wrote that hun, if you speak to her can you please tell her how much she changed my life as my life went downhill when my daughter was diagnosed UNTIL i found this poem that put everything into perspective and gave everything a whole new light and way of seeing things.
I love Holland and dont care that I’m not in Italy now as im having so much fun and learning so much being here in Holland.
xx
Can I just add that I am quite new to Holland so I’m still exploring as my daughter turned 2 on Sat 19th April and our plane touched down when she was 4 weeks old.
xxx