🌷 Welcome to Holland: Finding Beauty in the Life You Didn’t Expect

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Sometimes life doesn’t go according to plan.

You map out your dream trip — Italy — with excitement and high hopes. You picture the beauty, the culture, the adventure waiting for you. But when you arrive, you step off the plane and realize… you’re not in Italy at all. You’ve landed somewhere entirely different.

This is the powerful metaphor at the heart of Emily Perl Kingsley’s timeless story Welcome to Holland.
Kingsley originally wrote it to describe the unexpected journey of raising a child with a disability — but her words reach far beyond that experience. The story reminds us that even when life takes an unexpected turn, there’s still meaning, beauty, and peace waiting to be found — if we’re willing to look for it.

As someone who works with people navigating sobriety and recovery, I see this theme come alive every day.
When people first decide to get sober, they often imagine “Italy.” They picture a smooth, joyful, problem-free life ahead — one where everything finally falls into place. But what they often find instead is “Holland” — a quieter, slower, more unfamiliar landscape.

At first, it may feel like a disappointment.
But over time, Holland reveals something more profound. It shows us that real beauty often grows in unexpected places. Below is Emily Perl Kingsley’s Story Welcome To Holland that I belive you will be able to relate to in early recovery. The story addresses the experience of being on this side of sobriety and thinking, hmm, this is different than what I thought it would be like.

✨ Emily Perl Kingsley’s Story Welcome To Holland

Welcome To Holland

by Emily Perl Kingsley

Copyright©1987 by Emily Perl Kingsley. 

All rights reserved. 

Reprinted by permission of the author.

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 flight attendant 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.

🌿 Finding Beauty in Your Own Holland

I love this story because the feeling is universal. When we finally stop comparing where we are to where we thought we’d be, something powerful happens — gratitude can begin to grow.

We start noticing the small things that make this version of life meaningful:

• The warmth of morning sunlight through the window.
• A smile and connection from a loved one.
• The relief of sleeping soundly without chaos.
• The laughter shared with someone who truly sees you.

This is the heart of Holland — not the life we imagined, but a life that’s still full of love, discovery, and quiet grace.

As Emily reminds us, if we spend all our time mourning the loss of “Italy,” we’ll miss the beauty right in front of us — the tulips, the windmills, the art, and the life that’s uniquely ours.

🌼 A Gentle Invitation

This week, I invite you to notice one beautiful thing about your own Holland each day.
Not as homework, but as a soft awareness.

It might be:

• The way the light hits the sky at dusk.
• The sound of laughter from someone you love.
• The peace that comes from an honest conversation.

Pause long enough to notice it. Let yourself feel it. Appreciate it.

Because sometimes, the most beautiful parts of our journey aren’t found in the places we planned — they bloom where we least expected to land.

If your Holland feels uncertain, trust that you’re not alone. Life doesn’t always take us where we imagined, but it often takes us where we’re meant to grow.

🌿 Live freely. Evolve fully. Thrive.

— Stuart Cline
Host of Sobriety Now What?
Licensed Counselor • Success Coach • Recovery Educator