Holiday Message from Maryland

An open letter to the Target community,

The year is winding down. The blog will be on break for two weeks as we navigate the end of 2022 and the beginning of 2023. The office has taken on a quiet hum as individuals and team members anticipate the holiday season. Talk of holiday plans and travel build another layer of excitement. My daughter flies in tomorrow night, with my parents coming a day later. We will be sad that my working-adult son will not be with us for a holiday celebration.

Less than two weeks remain in 2022, and as the calendar resets for January 1, I’ll celebrate six months with Target Community and Educational Services and McDaniel College. The gifted Maryland state flag Christmas sweater indicates that I have arrived and am not going anywhere. One of our board members commented that she believed I’ve settled in nicely and have found my home with Target.

I offer this final 2022 blog post as one more ‘thank you’ to Target, McDaniel College, and my new community for the hospitality, support, and place to call home. As the front end of the transition rolled out, every detail fell perfectly into place. The same has been true on the back end. This signifies that we are together in this time and space for the right reasons.

To each Target participant, team member, board member, and community supporter; to all the stakeholders of Target, thank you. It has been a pleasure to meet with you, hear your stories, and share the common vision of normalizing the inherent dignity of all community members. To be in the same boat, rowing in the same direction, with equal intensity, is a gift that simplifies all our interactions. There are many whom I still need to meet, relationships not yet established, and opportunities not yet realized. In each of these future interactions, I look forward.

Our road will be long. We will celebrate success, learn from failures, and change society. What greater thrill is there in this life?  With a soul full of gratitude, a heart full of love, and a head full of ideas, I wish you the merriest of holidays and a prosperous new year.

#thanks Target,

-mjr

“I get up every morning determined to both change the world and have one hell of a good time. Sometimes this makes planning my day difficult.” -E.B. White