Help 500 children with disabilities in Kharkov

It is very hard to choose words to describe the state parents are in when after nine months of happy anticipation their child comes to this world. However, his or her birth suddenly not makes them glad but shocks. Their baby is different! To accept him or her means to face very painful feelings and go through them. Adaptation to this fact – birth of a different child – and reorganization of life in correspondence to it become the main priorities for parents. Every family goes through its grief individually. What is it like – bringing up a disabled child? In order to help those who have never gone through it and understand this unique experience, Emily Perl Kingsley has written the following.

«I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability – to try to help people who have not shared this 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 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.

…So here you are in Holland. It should become your home. You have some time to calm down and accept the fact that is a different trip, not the one you have been planning…

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 have never met.

It’s just a different place.

It’s more 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… 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, about many very special and favorite things».