I’m not sure who was more taken aback, myself or the group. All I could think while crying was, fck, this is not how I was raised.
“Get it together, Michélle.”

I felt so embarrassed afterwards that I decided to unpack it, like any good strategist would. I gathered some data to try and establish what exactly triggered it, because even I didn’t see it coming.

I’d been feeling very low and homesick for a good couple of weeks. I’m talking about 5 out of 10 here. Longing for Africa like never before, but also without any real desire to go back. Just a deep-rooted heartache for the culture, the “gees”, the family, the friends, and obviously, let’s be honest, the sun. Combine that with anger for what the country has become in terms of corruption, safety, and just all things spicy and you have me sitting in a jet wash of emotions, doing my best to function, until someone in that group asked a genuine, heartfelt question:

“How are you doing personally?”

And that was me… done.

When the Leader Becomes the Loneliest Person in the Room

As a business owner, no one genuinely and wholeheartedly ever asks you how you’re doing. The focus, rightly so, is on your team - their wellbeing, their workload, their growth. The leaders, the founders, the entrepreneurs - we all get left miles behind in that equation.

In South Africa, I had years of a strong, unspoken network of entrepreneurs and business owners, genuinely just people who got it. People who knew what it meant to operate in chaos and still deliver. To “make a plan.” To laugh in crisis, to celebrate every single, irrespective of how small the win, with champagne every Tuesday.

Moving to another country means that for the most part you leave that behind and you start from scratch. While online networks are great, they’ll never beat the face-to-face coffee catch-ups, the well timed tequila, or the ‘bru, everything is figure-outable hustle’ or the silent understanding that comes from being cut from the same survival cloth.

Those kinds of relationships take years to cultivate.

Gathering the data

So I did what I do best: I gathered data.

I reached out to a few trusted friends and business networks and asked how they really felt towards the end of year two of immigration. The consensus? Everyone felt sh*t. Not necessarily depressed, just emotionally winded.

Every time we try to explain that to someone back home, there’s always that one comment:
“Well, then just come back.”

Please, don’t be a “doos”.

That’s so far off the point.

It’s not about wanting to move back, or not embracing the adventure. We sold everything, backed our decision, and took on the unknown with a leap of faith and excitement. What’s in Africa isn’t in the UK, and what’s in the UK isn’t in Africa. Both give you something and both take something away.

The psychology of homesickness

Homesickness isn’t just about missing a place, it’s also about missing the version of yourself that lived there.

South Africa raised me in its wild rhythm - raw, loud, unforgiving but yet beautiful. A place where resourcefulness is oxygen. It raised me to roll with the punches, but keep the “gees.” To move fast or get left behind. To improvise, to think on my feet. It gave me grit, humour, and a sixth sense for risk. That’s not something you just “get over.” It’s embodied in you.

In the UK, the systems work. People breathe easier and move much slower. “Tomorrow’s another day” isn’t necessarily laziness, it’s just not crisis management. However, if you’re used to operating in an environment where the sun burns hot and life burns hotter, that calm can sometimes feel like someone’s turned the volume right down on life.

It’s okay, because both realities can be true and learning to hold two worlds at the same time becomes part of the immigrant’s heart beat.

Immigration is identity surgery

Immigration doesn’t just move your postcode, it rearranges your identity.
You become two people:

• One who understands every joke, every cultural reference, every rhythm of your old life.

• One who’s learning new norms, new slang, new systems, and a new way of belonging.
  

That friction? It’s uncomfortable to say the least. However packing up your whole life in a 23kg suitcase and stepping into a new one, also forges a different kind of grit.

It teaches you to build from scratch again. To lead without the crowd. To find “home” not in a location, but within yourself. I’ve come to realise these past few days, home is your roots, your upbringing, your values - not just your street address. It’s who and what you take with you when the game and field changes.

To my fellow entrepreneurs

To every business owner and entrepreneur out there navigating life between two worlds - I see you and I respect you.

You’re holding it together for your team, your family, your clients, while quietly rebuilding your sense of belonging. You’re carrying the weight of decisions that no one else will ever fully understand. Sometimes one gentle question hits you like a plot twist, and suddenly your tears will arrive before your brain has caught up.

That moment doesn’t diminish you. If anything, it shows that transformation is happening beneath the surface.

So no, I’m not going “home,” and no, I’m not running away from the life I’m building.

It’s about learning to hold grief and gratitude in the same breath - to honour what shaped me while embracing what’s shaping me now, and to realise that you can outgrow a place and still love it fiercely.

So let’s keep building, keep figuring out the coping mechanisms to carry us through this season - the healthy ones, the messy ones and the necessary ones.

Let’s also remind ourselves that these emotions are not only normal, but part of the terrain. Some days we are dancers, some days we are warriors and some days we are both in the same hour, but we will keep showing up tomorrow, keep moving forward and backing ourselves in building a life that combines our worlds together in the best possible way.

Because if there’s one thing I know for sure, it’s this:

You can take the girl out of Africa, but Africa stays in her bones, and that grit together with faith, is all she needs to keep building.

also, if all else fails, well there’s always champagne..

Normal was: it’s ok to skip a night or two’s sleep.

6 years ago normal was waking up at 3:30am to get my training session in before the day started, normal was sitting on the indoor trainer at 10pm if I needed to get that green block on training peaks, normal was spending my weekends on the tar, cycling or running.

Normal was all stats.

8-9 years ago, normal was a scramble, it was inconsistent, it was everything hard. Work hard, play hard and train hard. Normal was navigating a divorce, starting a new business, running multiple other existing businesses and relocating. It was burnout, street fighting my way through life. Normal felt like a drunk game of Jenga - stack the blocks, just to have them come crumbling down again.

Normal was survival.

14 years ago, normal was navigating the Africa landscape in business. It was living and breathing standard operating procedures, setting up companies and structures across Africa. It was a different country nearly every week. It was learning different languages, navigating passed the chickens in the road, soaking up the sun on the Inhaca islands with a Dois M (2M) beer when there was yet another public holiday. It was realising the truth in the phrase “Africa Time”

Normal was salty hair, a tan and being patiently impatient.

17 years ago normal was wrapping up work as quickly as possible to go and have a tequila or two and dance the night away. Normal was heading home at 4am to be able to have a quick nap, shower and head to work, only to repeat it all again the next night.

Normal was wild.

19-20 years ago normal was caring for the mothership as she fought stage 4 cancer. Normal was waking up in the middle of the night hearing her in pain and normal was studying next to her hospital bed. Normal was trips to chemotherapy, doctors visits and normal was watching God work miracles as they called her time of death. Normal was retelling her story from death to life as she recovered in the ICU.

Normal was a miracle.

33 years ago normal was catching tadpoles, it was swimming at the Botswana salt pans when the rain came down while watching the endless backdrop of flamingos. Normal was being chased by elephants, normal was not being able to leave a tent at night after the fires were put out for the danger of wild animals. Normal was having an athletics day postponed because the elephants had walked across the field the night before.

Normal was Africa at its best.

For the past two years, normal has been navigating the emotions, excitement and practicalities around immigration. Normal has been constantly being humbled as I set up business in a new country, it’s been trying to find balance with my Africa ingrained fight or flight mode. Normal has been multiple rounds of IVF, it’s been unlearning old ways of doing things. Normal has also been experiencing a whirlwind of gratitude for this new life. Normal has been travelling to new places, experiencing new things and vitamin D tablets.

Normal has been an adventure.

Today, I’m working at what I would like my new normal to be, looking at how I would define normal for me, personally for the current and next season of my life.

As that’s just it really - we get to define our own normal and we get to change it as we navigate life through different seasons.

Food for thought, what’s your normal for the last quarter of the year going to be?

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I was still pushing hard - working long hours, chasing growth, staying visible - but it was a beat nonetheless. A quiet pause wrapped in productivity. One you might say was born from the hush that followed immigration… the stillness, the disorientation, the silence beneath the noise.

I grew up in a household that shaped me into someone with a hypervigilant amygdala. I’ve been running for a very long time. Running from swim practice to school, racing to meetings, squeezing in a shower after a long cycle before making lunch with friends on time. Hustling to finish work after an all-nighter, grabbing yet another caffeine spike to power through the day. I’ve never ‘had time’ to be sick, I took client phone calls while having my makeup done on my wedding day.

Here’s the truth though: I loved it. I lived for it. I thrived in it.

Reflecting on life - my habits, my pace, the way I operate in the silence - I realised this way of being is my familiar. It’s all I’ve ever known.

The environment I grew up in was disciplined. Intense. Structured. There was no room for “taking your time” or “seeing how it goes.”

I was raised on phrases like:
- “Don’t drag your feet.”
- “How badly do you want it?”
- “You’d better work for it.”
- “Don’t waste time.”
- “Don’t be lazy.”
- “If you’re only going to do it halfway, then don’t bother at all.”

A participation medal was not a thing. There was always a standard, always a push. Things had to be done fast and efficiently. There was an unspoken rule that emotion came second to action. Rest had to be earned and beneath it all, a quiet but relentless pressure: be prepared, stay sharp and don’t fall behind.

Then I immigrated.

And suddenly - wow! It was quiet!

Being an entrepreneur in a new country, I had nowhere I had to be. No clients demanding face-to-face time. No Champagne Tuesdays celebrating wins. Attending networking events where no one knows you, no one ‘catches up’ with you, No echo chambers in the gym. Just… quiet. It suddenly felt like an abundance of time.

We all have that list of things we’d do if we just had the time. Let me tell you - when that time arrives in a 24-hour travel window to your new home, seemingly out of nowhere… it hits differently.

This kind of quiet doesn’t come from a holiday, or a retreat. It comes from going from a packed life to what feels like the extreme of off-the-beaten-track quiet.

It hits in waves - depression, loneliness, deep contentment, peace, anxiety, joy, vitamin D deficiency (real talk) - name it, I felt it.

To add a little spice to that emotional rollercoaster, my fight-or-flight mode was thoroughly confused.

Two weeks into living in the UK, I nearly took out a man at a train station. I genuinely believed he was “creeping up” on me as I typed out an email on my phone. He wasn’t. He was buying a ticket from the machine behind me. He ended up apologising profusely while I stood there highly embarrassed - all 1.5 metres of me, South African adrenaline and all - convinced I was about to be mugged.

I kept feeling like I’d forgotten something every time I went for a run. Turns out, it was just my pepper spray - the one I no longer needed, but had carried back home for years.

When things got quiet, I thought I’d feel peace.
Instead, I felt pressure.

Not from outside, but from inside.
As if silence itself needed managing.

I started craving more structure, more order, more control.

You know that saying - “you’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with”? Well, what happens when those people are no longer there? When your everyday chats, the ones you didn’t even realise shaped your rhythm, just… stop?

You’re left with the silence of your memories - good and bad. You watch them fade in the rear-view mirror, and suddenly, you become the average of your own habits. The average of the content you consume. The books you read. The energy you choose.

The quiet shows you who you are - and who you’ve been performing as.

Now, 18 months in, and although my amygdala is still very much online, I’ve started to adjust and although my internal drive will always be there, I’ve had to rewire how I measure progress.

I believe that hyper-vigilance has served me incredibly well in so many ways. It got me here. I never want to “lose” it completely. However I’m starting to believe there’s another way.

Maybe it’s not about doing everything.
Maybe it’s not about controlling everything.
Maybe it’s about learning how to feel safe - without being in survival mode.

I still believe structure and order win the day - just with a different strategy behind them now. A different energy. The result? A different kind of success altogether.

The personal growth and the business growth I’ve seen unfold over the past 18 months has been beautiful and I look at it with an immense sense of gratitude.

If ever you find yourself with the option to take a beat in plain sight - still grafting, still showing up, but watching as life unfolds from a distance while not being in the mix- I dare you to take it!

It will change everything!

I have a quick question for you, one I don’t want you to answer lightly, but really sit with for a moment:

How much pressure do we really have?
And how much of that pressure do we put on ourselves?

That deadline you set? Was it really from the client or was it your own? That spelling mistake in an email, that follow-up that didn’t happen exactly at 8:06 a.m. like you planned.

I don’t know how you handle the imperfections of entrepreneurship, but for me? It’s a constant challenge. And if I’m being honest, sometimes I lose my mind when it’s not absolutely perfect, whether it’s on myself, my incredible team, a supplier, or even a client. Yes, I take no prisoners. If something’s on your table, it better leave as something you’re proud to sign your name to.

There’s a quote my mom, aka The Mothership used to say:
“If what you’re doing today ends up on the front page of the newspaper tomorrow, would you be okay with it?”
Now granted, I think she said this mostly to keep us in line before high school house parties… but kudos to her, it worked! :)

They say your early childhood years shape your internal compass—and I can honestly say, mine set mine like steel. I grew up in a home where participation medals weren’t a thing. Second place was tolerated only if you hit a personal best. But winning? Winning was the standard. That mentality shaped me into someone who strives to win at all costs. And God help you if you get in my way.

Over the years, I’ve worked—and continue to work—on myself to handle imperfections with more grace. I don’t always get it right, but I’m trying.

It’s not just about upbringing. It’s also about the sacrifices we make as entrepreneurs, especially in the early years. Those sacrifices leave scars. Not always bad ones, but they stay with you. They remind you how far you’ve come.

And now, I’ve come to realise something else:
Sometimes, it’s okay to breathe.
To adjust a deadline.
To let the imperfections go.

Health over hustle—always. Mental and physical health alike.

However, I also never want to lose my edge. I’m grateful for my upbringing. It’s helped me build businesses with boldness and fire. It’s just about taking a pause when needed. Being realistic. Reminding myself (and maybe you too) that consistency wins the race.

I don’t know your background, your business journey, or where your head’s at right now. However, I want to leave you with this:

Keep building.
Micros = macros.
You’re probably doing better than you think.
Take short breaks. Refill your mental capacity storehouse. Focus on the right things at the right time.

Below is a photo of me having a Woliday (work + holiday) in Mauritius.
Talk about pressure on self. I should’ve been on a catamaran sipping a freaking martini!

We live and we learn :) xx

I’ve been carrying this desire to write for years.
However, I kept holding back.

Partly because I didn’t know how to “label” it.
It’s not just faith. It’s not just business. It’s not just life stories.
It’s everything. The messy middle. The quiet victories. The breaking. The becoming.

And partly because of my business mind, I felt pressure—pressure to turn it into something “useful” or “profitable” right away.
However, the truth is, I don’t want this to be a funnel or a product.
I want it to be a place.
A place for truth. For reflection. For connection. For the stories we rarely tell.

So, what is this really?

It’s a space to write things that don’t always fit neatly into a brand or business.
To share the stories behind the stats.
To write what I’ve lived:

• Running barefoot as a child in Botswana and dodging elephants on athletics day

• Building businesses across Africa and the UK—and learning the hard way what to do (and what not to do)

• Losing everything but what fit into a small hatch back

• Spiritual warfare, burnout, faith rediscovered

• Coaching teams, firing teams, rebuilding after it all

• Woo-woo to worship. Hustle to healing.

• Workaholic diaries, Ironman finish lines, business lawsuits, deep sea dives

• Entrepreneurship, discipline, ADHD, imposter syndrome, resilience, and finding my feminine in the fire

And so much more.

What you can expect here:

I’m not here to teach.
This isn’t advice.
Just honest stories I’ve lived, and the truth I’m still figuring out.

Sometimes it’ll be raw.
Sometimes soft.
Sometimes just real, because that’s enough.

Some posts might sound like letters to a friend.
Others might feel like the words you didn’t know you needed to hear.
All of them? Faith-filled, failure-soaked, grace-laced, and fiercely human.

Why now?

Because I believe stories heal and truth inspires.
They connect.
They shift something.
They might not fix anything, but they remind us we’re not alone.

This space is for anyone who’s been in-between.
Anyone who’s rebuilding. Anyone who’s tired of pretending or trying to be only one thing.

Thank you for being here.
Thank you for giving your time and attention to these words.
I don’t take it lightly.

If something you read here stirs something in you, I’d love to hear about it.
If not, that’s okay too. Sometimes, it’s enough to simply sit with the words and let them land.

You’re not alone here.
And maybe, neither am I.

🤍
Michélle

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I have many fond memories of running around Sowa Town in Botswana as a child, with sun kissed skin and blonde chlorine bleached hair. My days consisted of school, collecting tadpoles from the rivers, marbles, cricket in the street, endless hours in the pool and avoiding the cows on the road when walking to a friends house (completely safe at the age of 6) I remember an athletics day being delayed as the elephants had walked across the course the day before! How Wild?! - However this was my norm. I remember camping and not being allowed out the tent after dark due to wild animals, roaming the salt pans and swimming for hours with only a solid pink horizon as thousands of flamingos gathered in the distance. I remember having some of the best childhood holidays in Zimbabwe (The then breadbasket of Africa) , making new friends as we went. Later years, when our family moved to South Africa it was roaming around on my bicycle in between friends houses (only needing to be home before the street lights came on for dinner) and then as a teen we used to walk to and from mates houses at 2am during school holidays, completely safe. Oh, the freedom!

Today in South Africa, as an adult, I don't take an uber alone after dark, I don't drive alone after 9:30pm at night. I don't go for a run without my pepper spray, I don't cycle in the streets, I don't swim in dams (due to my personal experience with E-coli and Bilharzia) and I fear the police (Due to the high level of corruption) Our home doesn't have electricity for sometimes 9 hours a day, depending on the load shedding stage, our currency is busy tanking and all around, people are high strung. My heart breaks for you Africa.

When the looting took place last year, I remember being covered in fear for my parents living in a small town in KZN. This fear soon settled after word spread that the taxi association is blocking all entrances to the town armed, in order to keep the looters out. This was when I really knew I was South African, the fact that I felt at peace knowing that the town my parents live in is being guarded by the taxi association! Yes, we are a different breed in SA!

As an entrepreneur however, I've always said you just need to be on top of your game and listen carefully, as every time the President opens his mouth, there is another entrepreneurial opportunity and something you have got to love about South Africans, is our grit, resilience and the ability to find the humour in everything.

Those who know me, know I'm an eternal optimist (sometimes to my own detriment) so even with a breaking heart it is still my choice to not get caught up in complaining tangent or stuck in a poverty mindset or latch on to limiting beliefs. Does this mean I'm staying? I'm not sure as yet, but what I do know is as long as I'm here, I'm going to make the absolute best of everything, keep grabbing opportunities, do my best to contribute to some form of change and spread as much kindness as possible.

With spreading kindness in mind, I handed a security guard a cold coke today, to which I received the response "wow, for me? thank you so much" - I drove off as I watched in my rear view mirror how he held the coke in his hands and smiled in complete disbelief of what had just happened. Which made me realise that an act of kindness is least expected. How truly sad?

So here are my thoughts, (and no, this is not going to solve any economic or political problems) but maybe, just maybe instead of trying to solve it all, or setting up camp in a everything's f*ckd frame of mind, we each focus on adding small additional good things each day. One good thing at a time, and just let a pile of good things grow..

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