For every family member: Welcome to Holland
I am often asked to describe the experience of living with child with an ED. It feels like this….
When you are going to have a baby, it is like if you are planning a fantastic trip to Italy. You buy several guidebooks and you will start to make a plans. Maybe the Colosseum, or Michelangelo’s David, the gondolas in Venice. You even may learn some phrases in Italian, you get sooo exited.
After months of anticipation, the day finally arrives. You take your bag and off you go. You are sitting all exited on the plane and after few hours, the plane lands. The stewardess comes and says: “Welcome to Holland”
“Holland?!? You say. “What do you mean Holland? I sing up for Italy! I a’m supposed to be in Italy. All my life I’ve dreamed of going to Italy.”
“There has been a change of the flight plan. They’ve landed in Holland, and you actually must stay there for a good while”
You do not like Holland, it is the last country in the world you would like to be.
The important thing is that even if you did not expected that, or wanted it, it is not a bad place, just different, it depends how you few it. You can hated, or you can accept that change. So, you must buy new guide books, you must learn whole new language, you will meet whole new group of people, you never met before, it is just a very different place…. It is much slower than Italy, less flashy than Italy. When you have been there for a while, you look around and you begin to notice that Holland is actually bearable, and what more even very nice. It has windmills, has tulips and even Rembrandt.
Many of your friends are busy coming and going from Italy, and they are all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there.
You will just say: “Yes, that’s where I was supposed to go. That is what I had planed”. The pain of that will not go away so easily, because the loss of dream is a very significant loss, but you can always make a new dreams, and discover the beauty of Holland.
If you spend your life mourning about not going to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the special, the very lovely moments in Holland.
The choice is yours, please make the right choice and learn to like Holland, it can be wonderful place…..:):):)
M
Hey Marie
This is just an AMAZING piece. I just loved reading it. I think that is really the biggrest challenge, to learn to accept that what you have may not have been the dream but it is what you have. And you will always be miserable and feel sorry for yourself if you keep wallowing and ruminating over not getting Italy. It is definitely difficult to listen to others who do not have the same challenges and are living what appears like the dream... but who know if it's all it's cracked up to be in italy anyway. We look at other people's lives and think they are perfect, but most people only tell you what they want you to know and a lot of people spend life living in THEIR dreams and so you don't hear the reality sometimes.
I think it must be very difficult and confusing for loved ones to watch a sufferer self-destruct. It must be a very helpless position & especially when loved ones don't have the distorted mind of the condition creating illusions to cover over the true reality of the condition
I felt such a sense of relief and acceptance when you said to find a map and explore Holland.. I know that when you make the best of where you are and stop fighting against it, something shifts and space is created. Your power starts to become tangible. YOU start to feel alive. You notice the world you are actually standing in instead of waiting for salvation or looking "over there" feeling depressed, thinking they are much luckier/happier or thinking "if I had that then....I'd be happy"
I rmbr, my mother saying to me after I recovered that she used to look at other people's children and wonder why was I the "only one." Why was it "only her child who was sick." How come "other people" can have kids who come through unscathed. & my mother all her life has done lots of charity and community work and there was a very Christian environment in ireland at that time & she said that she used to wonder, why with all she gave was I so sick, why were we so unlucky
My Mother was never a victim and has one of the most postive auras of anyone I know, but these questions come I suppose. It was nothing that any of my loved ones did wrong & I could only see that when the ED had left my mind and I got a different perspective. But you can be the best parent you know how to be and still there can be problems
Oh I remember reading then typing this out for the freedom anthology and being so so impressed with the wisdom, understanding and simplicity contained in it!
Parents, carers, family members and friends every ED sufferer can and will recover. Just like everythin else in life--we cannot control it all, but we can control how we react to what life throws at us and that reaction can make all the difference in the long term!
M thanks for posting this brill piece, and for those that took the time to read it --Thank you, and for coming on ICERERG in the first place.......you are making a huge difference to your loved ones recovery, and hopefully to your own journey too :o)
XSaoirseX
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Yes, Saoirse, I did write it many years ago for our Good News Anthology, then it was in your Freedom Anthology, I hope that our Iceberg is the biggest "Good News and Freedom Anthology" , where we learn and support one another.
Family members play such an important role in the process and often they do not realise how important, often they feel left out as well, hopefully on Iceberg we can be some help in that area at least in a small way.
This analogy helped me the most in my challenging times. Discovering beauty of Holland is not just one-day bus tour, but many years journey of discovery. I am just glad I love Holland now and I hope many family members will see all that beauty in time as well.
The most important thing in the luggage is “Hope”, often you need more than allowed weight
M :)
There is always a solution…:):):)