Cross-cultural love can be a playground for self-discovery, new traditions, and fulfilling, lifelong connections. The mission for Hearts in Translation is to help cross-cultural couples and families thrive in their daily lives by offering tools for effective communication and ways to embrace their different backgrounds while creating new traditions that work for their growing family.
Love is all you need…to make a heart-racing connection. Keeping that connection for a lifetime, also requires patience, communication, and lots of compromise. And that’s in a traditional relationship! Spice it up with different cultural backgrounds, and suddenly common sense expectations, needs, and habits become very foreign.
You love each other. A lot! And you love that your different backgrounds bring excitement and adventure to the relationship. BUT…sometimes you feel like a guest in your own home. Like you have to give up your traditions and habits because you’re outnumbered. Roller coaster feelings rage through your overwhelmed mind, alternating between giving in to keep things peaceful then resentment for giving up on yourself and pushing unrealistic expectations on everyone to regain control. You feel misunderstood, disrespected, and abandoned. All you know, is that you love each other, but feel lost and confused.
Hearts in Translation was started out of a need for answers and realization that there aren’t many available. Three and a half years into my second marriage, my husband and I realized the huge impact our different cultural backgrounds had on the relationship with each other, as well as with my three stepsons and new baby. A big part of me feeling like I did not belong in our own family came from unmet cross-cultural needs and inability to communicate those needs to my family. What was common sense to me, wasn’t even a thought to them (and vice versa). Once we identified the importance of that, we started working on understanding our traditions better and adjusting our communication styles to help blend our cultures and our family. Out of those lessons and experiences, Hearts in Translation was born to share these lessons and pass them on to you.
The Hearts in Translation Core Values
Community – As inundated as our society is with superheroes, being a superhero can be very lonely. We are social creatures that thrive within a strong community, where we can support each other, learn from each other, and pass on the traditions that create a sense of belonging. The HinT Community is dedicated to providing a safe environment where we can share our experiences and inspire each other to live fulfilling, blended lives filled with love and compassion.
Quality – The quality of life is dependent on the quality of information and resources available. We will always strive to provide the best quality services and products that focus on improving the quality of life as a culturally blended family.
Fun – Deep stuff aside, let’s have some fun! Keeping the spark of love flaming and the quality time spent with your family fulfilling is super important. A family that laughs together, stays together! We’ll keep the good times rolling with an ever growing resource of activities and fun ideas.
Boo to Taboo – Breaking traditions and reinventing your own definition of a happy life often starts with challenging conversations. Hearts in Translation is a welcoming, open-minded resource that helps you ask questions you didn’t know should be asked, raise taboo topics you were afraid to bring up, and find common ground in uncommon ways.
Paying it Forward – Learn it, do it, share it. We live in a country that is the mecca of the World for different cultures coexisting, yet culturally mixed relationships of all kinds still face challenges that are not adequately addressed in schools, workplaces, and at home. We want to embrace the idea of coexisting, yet the society is still in its infancy when it comes to guiding and teaching us how to do it. If we take the first step and commit to educating, encouraging, and inspiring each other and passing it on, beautiful relationships can bloom and thrive.