This Is Not What I Expected
October 21, 2021
There’s a feeling of...dissatisfaction that’s been brewing in me. Some days I wake up smiling, filled with ease. Other mornings it feels like things just aren’t quite right. I’ve been on edge, easily agitated.
This week, I came across a poem that was deeply resonant from Emily Perl Kingsley. She wrote it about her experience of raising a child with a disability. I've included it below.
It struck me deeply:
What if this moment is exactly as it should be?
What if I can feel grief and sadness that not everything is what I’d hoped for and still find beauty and delight right here where I am.
I know this isn’t a wild new thought I’m sharing for the first time today. Emily Perl Kingsley wrote this poem decades ago, and finding joy and making meaning in hardship is an essential part of my business model these days.
And yet, I’m still on my own journey to internalize it. I probably always will be: it's a practice, not a destination.
I find such grace in discovering new ways to learn and relearn, to retrain my brain and body to continue to accept and make meaning of exactly where I am today.
Those acts of consciousness—of witnessing discomfort while still noticing the delights—add up. And they can help us make a more meaningful life.
Welcome to Holland
by Emily Perl Kingsley
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 you’re planning a vacation to Italy. You’re all excited. You get a whole bunch of guidebooks, you learn a few phrases so you can get around, and then it comes time to pack your bags and head for the airport.
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 that there’s been a change of plan, that you’ve landed in Holland and there you must stay.
“BUT I DON’T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT HOLLAND!” you say. ‘I DON’T WANT TO STAY!”
But stay, you do.
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 a bad place filled with despair. You’re simply in a different place than you had planned.
It’s slower paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy, but after you’ve been there a little while and you have a chance to catch your breath, you begin to discover that 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’ll say, “YES, THAT’S WHAT I HAD PLANNED.”
The pain of that will never go away.
You have to accept that pain, because the loss of that dream, the loss of that plan, is a very, very significant loss.
But if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn’t get to go to Italy, you will never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things about Holland.
©1987 By Emily Perl Kingsley
All rights reserved
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