Many of us at The Village Clinic, both therapists and clients, know what it means to grow up with more than one map of home. Some were born here but raised in a language spoken elsewhere. Others crossed borders for study, love, or safety. Living between cultures is never a single story. It is a daily practice of belonging in more than one place at once.
The ordinary places where culture shows up
Culture doesn’t only arrive through big milestones. It threads through daily life. It’s there in the automated call centre that doesn’t catch your accent, leaving you repeating yourself until you give up. It’s at the school gates when your child asks why their packed lunch looks different. It’s in the GP waiting room where forms don’t fit your family structure. It shows up in festivals and holidays: Diwali lights strung across the high street, Passover in a neighbour’s home, Eid with extended family, Christmas carols sung with only half the words familiar.
It’s in the workplace, when silence is read as disengagement rather than respect, or when you miss the reference that everyone else laughs at as Erin Meyer reminds us in Culture Maps. It lingers in food smells: warming spices, grilled fish, challah, sourdough starter. Each carries belonging, sometimes followed by apology.
The loyalties that split and braid
Many people describe a double wish: to stay loyal to the people and values that raised them, and to live freely in the life they’ve built now. This doesn’t cancel itself out. It creates a braid. Some strands lie easily, others pull.
I recall Ana (not her real name), who moved from Spain, saying: “I want my children to grow up bilingual. But when they answer in English even as I speak Spanish, it feels like a small rejection. As if they’re choosing the world outside over the one inside our home.”
From David (not his real name), born in London to Ghanaian parents, I heard: “At work, I’m praised for being outspoken. At home, my parents see that as disrespect. I feel torn. Am I being confident, or betraying what they taught me?”
Leyla (not her real name), Turkish–British, shared: “When my partner says ‘let’s keep things private,’ he means intimacy. For me, keeping family out feels like secrecy. Neither of us is wrong. We just grew up with different definitions of closeness.”
The body’s quiet register of belonging
This isn’t only about ideas. Bessel van der Kolk writes, “Until the body feels safe, the mind cannot fully engage in healing”. The nervous system keeps score of safety, inclusion, and exclusion long before words arrive. Long stretches of code-switching, smoothing edges, or smiling through confusion register as effort. You may notice tension at family gatherings, a rise in heart rate before speaking at work, or a flatness after phone calls with home when shared references run thin. None of this means you are failing at culture. It means you are human.
Many of our clients come to therapy for all kinds of reasons: burnout, the pressure of work, family tensions, relationship struggles, feeling down, anxiety that won’t shift. Often, through the process, we find the impact of cultural difference is there too. Sometimes quietly, sometimes centre stage. It shapes loyalties, expectations, and the stories we tell ourselves about who we are allowed to be.
Love across maps
Couples often discover cultural differences only when life demands decisions. Where to live. How to handle money. How to raise children. Whether elders should have a room in your home. How often family visits. Who leads, who follows.
At first, love seems to erase differences. Later, the details matter. One partner calls frequent check-ins “care,” the other hears “control.” One expects decisions to be collective, the other believes partnership means two people in a room. Neither is wrong. Both are shaped.
What helps is naming the maps. Not to win, but to see. “In my family, advice is love.” “In mine, advice is criticism.” “In my home, guests drop in.” “In mine, you ask first.”
Once spoken, differences stop looking like flaws and become logistics two people can work with.
The second generation’s quiet question
If you grew up with parents who carried a country in their pockets, you may have learned to be grateful, to minimise struggle because someone else had it worse. Clients often ask: Am I allowed to find this hard when my parents endured more?
The answer is yes. Hard is not a competition. Your parents’ resilience doesn’t cancel your feelings. They can be heroes and you can still feel lost. You can honour their story and write your own.
Naming losses without apology
Leaving a place, even for good reasons, carries grief. Not only for landscapes and people, but for ways of being that don’t translate: Speaking without grammar slowing you down. Humour tied to references no one shares. The local hairdresser who knew your style. Music that moves your body in a rhythm that doesn’t exist here. A season marked by a fruit that never ripens in this climate.
You don’t have to justify missing these things. Naming loss is not betrayal. It’s part of integration.
A river confluence
Living between cultures can feel like standing where two rivers meet. The waters don’t cancel each other; they flow together, carrying you forward with more than one source. You don’t need to choose one over the other. You can learn to navigate the currents, sometimes turbulent, sometimes calm, and know that both shape who you are becoming.
If you feel the tug of not quite belonging anywhere, caught between languages, expectations, or traditions, know this: you are not alone. Your confusion is valid. Your longing is human. And your ability to live fully between worlds has not expired.
If this article resonates and you would like to find out how we can help you, contact us to schedule a confidential enquiry call today.
Written by Veronika Kloucek, Senior Psychotherapist, Trainer, Supervisor, and founder of The Village Clinic with support from AI tools for grammar and clarity. All editorial ideas and authorship remain fully human.
References
Porges, S. W. (2011). The polyvagal theory: Neurophysiological foundations of emotions, attachment, communication, self-regulation. W. W. Norton.
Berry, J. W. (1997). Immigration, acculturation, and adaptation. Applied Psychology: An International Review, 46(1), 5–34.
Meyer, E. (2014). The culture map: Breaking through the invisible boundaries of global business. PublicAffairs.
Pavlenko, A. (2005). Emotions and multilingualism. Cambridge University Press.
Hoffman, E. (1990). Lost in translation: A life in a new language. Penguin.
Bhabha, H. K. (1994/2004). The location of culture. Routledge.
van der Kolk, B. A. (2014). The body keeps the score: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma. Viking.