“Learning to Fly”
(My take of “Welcome to Holland” by Emily Perl Kingsley)
So special needs parenting is a bit like going on a trip to Disneyland.
Everyone is headed to Disneyland, so you board your own flight and get ready for the “magic.”
Except, some time in the middle of the flight, you find out you are not actually going to Disneyland. Your flight is different.
And as a matter of fact, you don’t know WHERE you are actually flying. Nobody does. And you have no way to find out.
You are actually the only ones on the plane.
And to top it off, you realize there are no pilots and you have to learn to fly and navigate the plane yourself or crash.
And in the cockpit, there are a million buttons and knobs and no manuals.
So you have to figure it out.
Eventually, you come to accept that you probably won’t ever make it to Disneyland like everyone else. Maybe you will, but you will most likely end up somewhere else.
And sometimes you long for the happiness that Disneyland may have brought.
But one thing you will learn, is that being at Disneyland isn’t the only thing that brings happiness.
You learn to find joy in the little things.
Instead of celebrating at Disneyland, you learn to celebrate the fact that you learned how to simply turn the plane.
When you figure out how to make the plane go up and down, you celebrate.
When you figure out how to work the landing gear… yeah. You celebrate that too.
Every little victory, you celebrate.
But you worry a lot too.
Where will you finally land? Will it be ANYTHING like Disneyland?
What happens if you haven’t learned how to land the plane before it runs out of fuel?
What if “this…?” What if “that?”
There are a million other questions that cause you anxiety, but you learn to push those thoughts aside.
You’ve got no time for that negativity.
You may not know how to land yet, but you are confident you will figure it out eventually.
Because even though you have no idea what you are doing, you just taught yourself how to do a barrel roll.
And that’s something you would have NEVER learned with a simple trip to Disneyland.
You learn to find happiness in the journey. Not just the destination.
