Short dream about having a child with a disability

When my youngest child with a disability was born I found a short story about how everything has changed, and nothing that you prepared for in having a child was aplicable anymore.

"I am often asked to describe an 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 some beautiful place. You buy a bunch of guidebooks and make your wonderful plans. You may learn some handy phrases in Indonesia. 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 India".

"India? you say. "What do you mean India? I signed up for Brazil! I'm supposed to be in Brazil. All my life I've dreamed of going to Brazil."

"But there has been a change in the flight plan. They've landed in India, and there you must stay."

The important thing is that they haven't taken you to a horrible, filthy place, full of famine and disease. It's just a different place. So you must buy new guidebooks. 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. . But after you've been there a little while, you look around and you begin to notice that India has Tajmahal. .

But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Brazil, 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."

The pain of that will never, 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 Brazil, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things about India.

I found it when my daughter was first born, she has CP. And I was just looking for it again, I couldn't remember much about it, and I looked and looked for months before I finally asked this question, I don't appreciate you implying that someone doesn't look just because you were able to find it.