2026’s biggest crisis and what it taught me about being "strong"
Listen for the audio version - read by the author herself.
It all went downhill on a Monday.
My family and I just returned from a short visa run. It was meant to be 4 days away, then home to Malaysia. Except we didn’t get home.
We were denied entry at the airport. And not just turned away at a desk and sent back on the next flight. We were detained. Separated - my partner Martin in the men’s room, Elisa and I in the women’s.
We were kept in a windowless room with fluorescent lights that never turned off, flight announcements blaring every few minutes, forty other women and children around us. Many were crying.
There weren’t enough chairs. People sleeping on the floor. Rice and eggshells and chicken bones scattered across a filthy grey carpeted floor.
We didn’t know when we would be let out.
So when my daughter Elisa asked: “Where do I sleep? Why can’t I brush my teeth, mommy? Why can’t we go home?”I faked a weak smile.
Then I watched her cry herself to sleep until 1AM on a cardboard sheet.
I tried holding it together. And then I couldn’t.
I asked Martin to take her for a few minutes, walked to the bathroom, sat on the floor of an airport toilet stall. And cried.
I felt so f**king powerless.
Here is the part I haven’t told you yet.
That same weekend, I was supposed to host Coaching Business Jumpstart - my business’s biggest event all year.
We’d already rented a beautiful Airbnb in KL to stream it from. My general manager Katherine had booked her flight to join me. We’d even commissioned a Malaysian local artist to draw a custom flipchart for us.
Over a hundred coaches had already registered.
So when I broke the news of my situation to my team, they immediately had a draft email ready: Jumpstart postponed.
And yet somewhere inside me - bone-tired, toilet-floor-sitting, powerless me - something said: it’s not over.
We rerouted everything. Found an Airbnb in Da Nang. Rebooked Katherine’s flight. Turned the flipchart into slides.
After spending 2 nights (or more accurately nightmares) in KL airport, my family and I flew to Da Nang on Wednesday morning. A close friend dropped everything and flew in to help with Elisa for 2 weeks so I could work. Katherine arrived.
On Thursday morning, Katherine and I left for the Airbnb streaming location.
The evening before the event, I sat with her and cried again. I said: I don’t know if I have it in me to do a good job.
She reminded me of something I had once taught her:
You just need to show up as yourself. That’s enough. Whatever wisdom you’ve built within you - it doesn’t disappear just because life got hard. It’s still inside you. And maybe, right now, the hard thing is giving you even more to offer.
On Friday morning, Jumpstart began. Over a hundred coaches showed up. In the opening, I told them the truth: 5 days ago I was crying in an airport toilet stall. And now I am here. Because I chose to show up for my calling anyway.
Dance break on Day 2 of Jumpstart. This is what joy looks like when you let yourself show up real, messy, fully human.
Here is the first thing I learned.
When people hear this story they keep telling me I’m strong.
I don’t feel strong. But I am strong, because I am supported. Those are not the same thing.
The support that held me last month was not summoned in a crisis. It was installed over the years.
The team I knew how to build. The systems we had put in place. The friend who dropped everything and got on a plane. Thes colleague who had already learned to work with me under pressure. The mentor who had helped me become someone who could hold all of this in the first place.
None of that appeared because things suddenly got hard. It was already there.
So I want to ask you: Who do you have installed? Not who would probably help you if you asked. Who would reroute their life on a Tuesday because you needed them to? Who knows your work well enough to carry it when you can't?
And beyond the team and the peers - do you have someone who has walked further down this road than you? A mentor, a coach, a guide who knows your patterns, believes in your potential, and can hold you to your highest self even when you're sitting on a floor somewhere?
That kind of support doesn't just catch you in a crisis. It shapes who you become before the crisis ever arrives.
Don't wait until the floor falls out to build any of this. Build it now. Tend those relationships now. Invest in those humans now. When life goes sideways - and it will, it always does - you will not have time to start from scratch.
Here is the second thing I learned.
I’ve taught it before. And then life gave it back to me at full volume so I could feel it again.
There will never be a perfect moment to show up for your calling.
Not a perfect time to start. Not a perfect set of circumstances to begin coaching, to launch the thing, to say the thing, to become the thing you know you’re meant to be. Life will not clear the path before you walk it.
The coaches in that room on Friday - over a hundred of them - they needed me to show up. The real, human me. Not a polished, #blessed, life-is-great version of me.
They needed the version of me that had just come from the floor. Because that version had something to say that #blessed version never could.
What you think disqualifies you is often the very thing that equips you.
The circumstances you’re waiting to escape - the hard season, the unfinished business, the uncertainty, grief, chaos - are not the reason to wait. They are the very reason to get out there and just do the damn thing.
I’m not saying to push through at all costs or ignore your body or perform strength you don’t have.
I’m saying: train yourself to ask a different question.
Instead of how is this stopping me, ask: how is this an advantage that can propel me forward?
Ask that once. Ask it every time. Watch what changes in how you see your life.
—
I’m still processing everything that happened. Some mornings I still feel the fluorescent hum of that room. I still see Elisa’s messy hair on that cardboard sheet.
But I also feel something else. A solid ground that wasn’t there before. The kind that comes when you have been tested and discovered you did not, in fact, fall apart. That the thing you built over years - the team, the relationships, the inner knowing, the practice of showing up - held.
It held.
I hope you’re building something that will hold too. Something real, tended with care, supported by the people who love what you’re building as much as you do.
With love from a sunny corner in Da Nang,
Milena
P.S: You may wonder what one wears to host a 3-day business training event for over 100 people when one has only packed for a 4-day beach trip.
The answer is: a blazer borrowed from your Da Nang team member Belle, and pyjama shorts. From the waist up, I was a CEO. From the waist down, I was ready to lie down. Somehow it worked perfectly as a metaphor.
P.S.S Reply and tell me: what's the thing you keep thinking disqualifies you? I have a feeling it's actually your greatest asset. I read every response personally. And I might just have something to say back.
Listen to the audio version
A reader once told me my emails gave her shivers - and the good kind.
Every week I send out *special* emails, fondly referred to as Wildflower Letter, to thousands of readers worldwide… - filled with strange business advice that has made me loads of happy money, behind-the-scenes confessions, laugh-out-loud stories, and hot updates I just don’t share anywhere else.
Hey, fellow purpose-driven human!
I’m Milena. When I was 24, I said no to corporate job offers to “do my own thing.”
9 years, some major fumbles, 3 TEDx Talks, 1 published book, 50,000 followers, and hundreds of clients (from 15+ countries) later…
I make a multi-six-figure living as a coach while spending most of my time walking barefoot in my apartment. #introvertgoal
I know you want to make a difference.
I’m here to help you turn that calling into a financially sustainable coaching business — while staying away from the hustle, and skipping the pitfalls that trip up most new coaches.
Quit your 9-to-5. Move to a paradise island. Slow yoga every morning. Work from sunlit cafes. Make time for loved ones (including yourself). Grow your influence. Wake up excited about your day. And serve only the clients who light you up…
All of that (and more!) is possible, once you have the right support.
Let me help you shine.
The thing that almost broke me ended up being the most powerful thing I had to offer.