Minnick Group

This is great advice!

"You can spend millions on persuasion, but you can’t buy a neighbor’s credibility. You can’t buy the social permission that comes from a trusted friend saying, 'This matters — and I need you with me.'"

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We raise young lions here.

One of the traditions Julie started in our family when the girls were young was Christmas journals. She's found hand made, leatherbound journals in London or Italy when she's traveling and now every child and grandchild in our family has one.

She and I both write a page each in the journal giving either an affirmation for what we've seen them accomplish that year, or pointing out qualities we've seen in their character that make them uniquely loveable. Often it is a forward-looking thought of inspiration about the coming year.

I can't tell you how memorable the Christmas journal tradition has been for us! Girls cry, grandchildren climb up and ask us to re-read them to them over and over again. This year one of my daughters sat for five minutes before opening it because she knew she was going to cry, so certain she was of the love and TRUTH she'd read.

They know they are seen when they read what we say to them every Christmas. They feel heard, noticed, appreciated. They feel like they belong.

This picture from 2021 was Milani's first Christmas journal entry. This year she brought her journal to me and, with emotion in her face, asked me to read it to her.

"Both my words and JuJu's or just mine?"

"Just yours! Those are JuJu's!"
(There is a great deal of privacy involved in these journals by the way. As far as I know, no one has read anyone else's.)

I read my words to her as she climbed up in my lap and cuddled against me, tears in her eyes. The words were affirming. They saw into her little heart and acknowledged the person she wants to be. She asked me to read it several more times as we held each other and she cried.

Then she looks up into my face, my shirt wet from her tears, and says, "Abuelo, sometimes I cry when I'm happy."

"Is that why you're crying now?" I asked.

She just nodded and climbed down to go find Julie.

She's six.

We don't raise followers here in our family. We build leaders. We raise lions and lionesses. The first key to that is to give them a place they belong so they never seek it elsewhere.

"The judge favors a map that cuts the population of the district with the highest Hispanic citizen voting age in the Yakima Valley (from 52.6% to 50.2%) and throws Sen. Torres out of her district and into another one with a Republican incumbent. This will force her to give up her current seat and run a very difficult race in a new district. Alternatively, she could just finish her term in her current district and then be out of a job.

"The judge says he needs to do this to satisfy the requirements of the federal Voting Right Act. The VRA is supposed to help minorities — not be used to disenfranchise them.

"Judge Lasnik’s map is nothing less than partisan political gerrymandering, which in the name of helping Hispanics will actually disenfranchise many of us — including our outstanding Sen. Torres."

Redistricting decision will hurt WA Latino voters | Op-Ed A Republican Latina senator has been moved to another district by a heavy-handed ruling by a federal court judge.