Bill Belew has raised 2 bi-cultural kids, now 34 and 30. And he and his wife are now parenting a 3rd, Mia, who is 8.

My Dad is great and I love him so much

Dad’s are great. You won’t realize until you become a dad yourself. It’s a very touchy topic, and you won’t know when you are really into your teens (well, for a lot of us). When you are really facing the world, grown up, growing up things are becoming different, very different. You did not think this world is a hard place and you will work so hard to get what you want, to feed your family, to give them a good life. Well, now you simply realize how did your dad do it? How did you not realize these tough things to come. It’s because dad’s never let these things come to you. They just take on whatever comes to give their family good and healthy life. We go on day by day and don’t realize the hard facts. It’s a tough job being a dad.

My dad is an entrepreneur. He had run the business all his life. He had expanded the business to businesses to make it big so that one day I will have something of my own. It’s a family business. Traveling is a big part in business or job. When you are traveling you are not with your family, you are not home. You don’t eat at home but you eat at a restaurant. The food is mostly bad, timing is mostly odd. But you do it. You keep doing it. This is a part of today’s life. Whenever you are away you think of getting home.

I learned from my dad one phrase “Do it, put your hard work, don’t worry about the outcome, just do what you have to do”. Well, I follow it every day and in everything I do. It makes me feel easy and it makes me focus on what I need to do and to do it right, to put in my best and to just keep my eye on the ball and not to worry about the outcome. I don’t worry about the outcome as long as I have put in my best work into something and dedicatedly worked on it. It has given me motivation and focus in the worst of the times. I never lose sight of what I need to do. I never get distracted by those negative thoughts and distractions that pull you away from what you are doing and take you away.

Another amazing thing I learned from my dad is to never give up. Well, this might get a bit personal. He had an accident 3 years ago and was operated by a jerk(doctor). He crushed his bone during the op and another jerk performed another operation and this guy was a family friend. He almost got my dad killed by poisoning him with wrong meds. H turned blue before we realized what was going on. He couldn’t speak and we took him to apollo and he was operated and was successful. But it took him another 2.5 years and another operation to get him alright. Alone in the house with a little help, he lived with a hope that he will walk again and nothing stopped him doing it. He is a guy who wakes up at 4 am to jog and read the rest here…

Talk to Bill and others about their experiences raising bi-cultural Japanese-American kids.