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Welcome to Holland: Finding Beauty After Cancer · Dying to Tell You

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  There's a wonderful parable written by Emily Pearl Kingsley.
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  It's called Welcome to Holland.
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  You can find it online if you're interested.
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  She wrote it about her experience of raising a child with a disability.
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  The gist of the parable is this.
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  Imagine you're planning a trip to Italy.
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  It's something you've always wanted to do.
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  You spend a lot of time learning the language, getting guidebooks and deciding where to go
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  and what you're going to eat, and after months of anticipation, you finally get on the plane
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  to go.
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  Then, some hours later, you land, and the flight attendant says, Welcome to Holland.
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  You're not in Italy, you're in Holland, and there's no way to get to Italy at this point.
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  And now everything that you planned goes out the window.
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  What do you do?
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  Do you spend your time wishing that you were in Italy, or do you adjust and find out what
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  Holland has to offer?
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  This story came up in an interview that I recorded this week that you'll hear in season
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  four.
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  But as my guest was talking about this story, I thought of Rachel's story.
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  Rachel, a young woman living out her dream of leaving the small town in Texas, experiencing
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  the larger world, living in Chicago.
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  She was living out the story that she thought she had written.
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  But then, you heard her story.
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  How she got sick, found her cancer, moved back to Texas, and the story she thought she
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  was living turned out to be something completely different.
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  Hoping to live in New York City, but ending up in Tyler, Texas.
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  Like hoping to go to Italy, but ending up in Holland.
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  But it's even more than that.
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  Hoping to live a long life with a long career.
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  Now living her life wondering not if, but when her cancer will return.
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  Knowing that most likely, she won't live as long as she had hoped.
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  But Rachel is reframing her life.
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  I'm sure there's still lots of grief for the life that she believed that she was going
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  to live, just like the person that had hoped to go to Italy.
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  But Rachel is also learning the new language, getting new guidebooks, meeting new people,
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  and adjusting to the place that she's found herself in.
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  And she's finding that even though life is turning out different than she thought it
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  would be, there are beautiful things and beautiful people in this unexpected life.
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  Summer at the lake, a partner that loves and supports her, and finding ways to still enjoy
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  some of the things she always wanted to do.
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  Things don't always go as planned or hoped.
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  It seems like there are a lot of things in the world right now not going how I would
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  like.
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  Things close to home, things farther away.
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  I don't know exactly what to do about all of them.
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  But what I can learn from Rachel, and from so many of my guests and patients over the
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  years, is that even though I can't always choose what happens in life, I do get to choose
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  how I live.
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  Do I sit by the canal and wish I was eating pasta?
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  Or do I buy myself a pair of wooden shoes and go look at some tulips?
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  I have to say my instinct is often to sit and pout, or to be angry when things don't
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  go my way.
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  And I believe that kind of emotional reaction is okay, for a time.
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  But pouting and stewing in anger aren't productive.
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  The quicker I can move past unhelpful emotional reactions, the quicker I do something productive.
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  And maybe, even find some beauty and meaning wherever I might find myself.
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  This is dying to tell you.