Yesterday afternoon, I sat in the dark at Theatre of Digital Art in Madinat Jumeirah with my twins on either side of me. For two hours, nobody reached for a phone.
We were at Connect Generations, a forum organised by Hidden Hero and People of the Future, the company founded by Olga Sapozhnikova—a Dubai-based documentary filmmaker and former Russian diplomat who has spent the last two decades trying to bridge divides, first between nations, now between generations of the same family (Khaleej Times, 2025).
The line-up brought together voices from genuinely different fields, all circling one question: what do families pass down, and what gets lost along the way? Dr Ludmila Vassiliev, one of the pioneers of holistic healing in the UAE, spoke about the difference between suppressing sickness and building energy. Bestselling author Nadine Chammas spoke on guiding young people's talents. Writer and psychologist Aisulu Akhimova and the world's youngest TEDx speaker, Kiara Kaur, both addressed what gets inherited without being said out loud. Entrepreneur Matteo Pittaluga made the case that it's shared values, not shared hobbies, that keep families close, and Hidden Hero's Igor Karpikov closed with a line simple enough to remember: do everything with passion (Gulf News, 2026).
Around the talks, the day had its own rhythm. It opened with a piano. A vocalist followed, filling the theater completely. Between sessions, a short film on motherhood ran with no narration—just the reality of what the role actually asks of a woman, day to day. And it closed with a poem that had a good part of the room reaching for tissues.
I brought my children on purpose. Grief, rebuilding, starting again in a country that isn't where you grew up—these aren't only things that happened to me. They're part of the air my children breathe, whether I put words to it or not. Sitting there together, hearing grandparents, parents, and even a child discuss in the same breath, felt like exactly the sort of thing I want them to have language for now, not in twenty years' time.
A practical takeaway
You don't need a theater or a guest list to do a version of this at home. Pick one thing this week—a recipe, a phrase your grandmother used, a way of marking a birthday—and tell your children where it came from, out loud, on purpose. Ask them, just as directly, what they'd want to pass on themselves. Connect Generations made the case better than I can summarise here: the traditions that survive are the ones somebody actually said out loud.
This is very much what HerSphere is built around too—not just getting through a hard season, but deciding, deliberately, what you carry forward into the next one. If today's piece resonated, our Resources & Insights hub has more on rebuilding family life in the UAE, one decision at a time.
