What we’re about
Hello and Welcome!
Several years ago, an American girl met a wonderful Indian man. A few years later, she married him, and gained a whole new family with cultural traditions and expectations entirely different from the ones she grew up with.
While I know that my story is not unique, and that there are more and more couples out there that are embracing partners and spouses from every different culture, in my experience it has been very difficult to meet other people who share my intercultural joys (and, let's be honest, frustrations). So many times over the last few years I have found it challenging to either vent to my Indian friends, who might think I was being overly judgmental of their culture, or to my American friends, who could never understand why I was tying myself up into an intercultural pretzel in the first place. No doubt any Indian woman in a relationship with an American would have the reverse, but no less frustrating situation.
If you are a woman living in the Austin area looking for someone who understands and can sympathize with your Masala relationship, then this group is for you. We will meet once a month for tea, in various parts of Austin, depending on which neighborhood becomes the most convenient.
This group has no age requirements, but I would respectfully ask that it be for women who are either in relationships with people from Southeast Asia (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka) or women from Southeast Asia in relationships with people not from that region. The reason for this is that my only experience is with intercultural communication in Southeast Asian communities, and I want to ensure that this group has the most targeted effect and impact. My hope is that this group will allow women, both Southeast Asian or not, to help each other understand the cultural difficulties in their own relationships and turn them into opportunities.
