For me, the best part about Halloween is that it is followed by Thanksgiving. I love everything about Thanksgiving dinner: family, football, and food, lots of food. One of the things that makes the food so amazing is that everyone always brings their best dish. Imagine the meal with just turkey or mashed potatoes or maybe just one pie. Variety is what makes it so special and fattening. While I thought about all of this the other day, the saying, “Everybody brings something different to the table” came to mind and I realized how the literal and figurative meaning of this applies in real life.
First, I asked a few of the staff members at CORE what their favorite turkey day foods are and if they are invited to bring a dish, what would they bring. Diana told me she loves stuffing and cranberry sauce, but she would bring a pumpkin pie for the table. Our Executive Director, Lori, says she loves stuffing but doesn’t know how to cook. From personal experience with her, I know she will bring a fresh vegetable tray and dip for the table and tell everyone she grew the vegetables in her garden even though the tray has a Meijer tag on it! 😊 Amber, our Program Director, loves corn casserole but would bring a dessert for the table.I love stuffing with gravy and I would bring ham and cranberry sauce because I don’t like turkey that much.In the end, between the four of us, our table would literally have a pumpkin pie, ham, veggies and dip, cranberry sauce and Amber’s best dessert. Even though we have a start, we would need to invite a lot more people to fill this table with the variety we all like because our dinner is incomplete.
Next, I thought about the figurative meaning of how everybody brings something different to the table and how it applies to our participants at CORE. Just like the food at Thanksgiving dinner, we all have special likes and things we do (cook) well. Even our life experiences make us unique. At CORE we train individuals with disabilites who come to us with a variety of life experiences we will never have because we have not lived our lives with a disability. Though the disabilities are hindrances in their lives, their experiences and perspectives bring something totally different to the table and for an employer this can be a plus.
Our participants bring something new to the table that others cannot. Our participants inspire others to be better because individuals with disabilites often times have to work harder than the rest of us to achive their goals. Our participants are loyal because they don’t take employment opportunities for granted. Just like our Thanksgiving table, it would seem incomplete for companies not to have employees with a variety of skills and life experiences our participants offer.
AT CORE we are thankful for so much. We are thankful for our employees, our participants and their families, and the companies who hire our individuals with disabilites because they know everyone can bring something new to the table.
We hope you all have a blessed Thanksgiving day.
