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 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.
by Emily Perl Kingsley, retrieved from HERE on July 10, 2026.
Invitation: “but if you spend your life mourning…”
A Commons Practice
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Emily Perl Kingsely spent 45 years as a writer for Sesame Street, where she helped shape a more inclusive vision of children's television and became a leading voice for disability representation. She is best known for writing Welcome to Holland, a reflection that has comforted countless families navigating life with disability. Her advocacy has always been deeply personal, inspired by her son Jason, whose life and accomplishments continue to challenge assumptions about disability, independence, and belonging.
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July Courageous Citizen
Dr. Paul Farmer
For our July Americans Who Tell the Truth feature, we chose Dr. Paul Farmer because he spent his life living into the belief that we have a moral responsibility to accompany those who suffer. He didn’t simply talk about equity. He embodied it. Whether someone lived in a remote village or a place forgotten by the rest of the world, he believed no one should be beyond the reach of care.
https://americanswhotellthetruth.org/portraits/dr-paul-farmer/
"It's just a different place" is the phrase and invitation that resonated with me in this reflection on discovering one has a child with a disability. Different, not worse. Holland, not Italy. There is a profound sense of acceptance that I sense in-between the lines that allows one to see, to experience what is good about Holland, when one is not in Italy, considering her image of planning for a trip.
This brought me back to something many people struggle to admit: gratitude for the life that arrived does not erase the grief for the life once imagined. Both can exist together. The image of Holland works because it doesn’t ask anyone to pretend the disappointment was small. It simply leaves room, after the pain, to notice the tulips. That feels honest—and deeply kind.