What happens when the words you need most aren't in the language you were born into?

Arndt is German, born and raised in northern Germany, and has lived in the United States for more than 25 years, where he owns a chiropractic franchise in Ohio and works as a leadership and life transition coach after two decades in corporate sales leadership. English became the language of his daily and professional life after the move. Spanish came last, picked up almost by accident during the isolation of the pandemic, and it opened onto something he never expected: a deep, unplanned connection to Argentina that eventually became his podcast, Jamás tan argentino.

In this conversation, we talk about the day Arndt's father was dying in Germany, and Arndt, stuck in the US with travel impossible, needed to send a final message by WhatsApp, and how German, his own mother tongue, gave him nothing, while the lyrics of a song by an Argentine singer helped him find the words. We talk about starting therapy during the pandemic, the quiet judgment he felt just for admitting he needed help, and the relief of finding an Argentine therapist with whom Spanish let him open up in a way English and German never had. And we talk about the friendships he has built almost entirely across a screen, some sustained for years without ever meeting in person, and the small vocabulary of Argentine affection, gordo, negrita, te quiero mucho, that took some getting used to translated literally into German.

What Arndt describes isn't a language changing who he is. It's a language finally letting a part of him through, the part that could say goodbye to his father, sit with a therapist and mean it, risk being a beginner in public, on a podcast, in his third language.

The conversation is in Spanish throughout, the language he says lets him speak from the heart instead of chasing perfection.