What if you lost almost everything, except the one thing you were building? Migdalia Sanchez and Claudio Soriano (aka Migdy and Clau), didn’t set out to become authors. Migdy is a professional counselor and life coach. Clau has a background in electrical and process engineering. Both spent twenty years mentoring young adults, first as volunteers, then as certified life coaches, long before either of them thought about putting any of it into a book. Then came a workshop, a hurricane, a decade of writing, and a 450-page manuscript that had to be split in two just to become manageable. In this conversation, Migdy and Clau talk about what it actually took to turn twenty years of mentorship into their book What The FCK is Happening To Me? (Esp: ¡¿Qué PÑTA me está pasando?!) They also talk about why they left Puerto Rico with almost nothing, and why the project survived every single thing that tried to stop it. Note: Some quotes below have been lightly edited for clarity and readability. Highlights Trust isn’t given. It’s earned one relationship at a time.Migdy’s first experience with mentorship came through a volunteer program in Puerto Rico, matching mentors with teenagers from high-risk environments for a full year. It wasn’t easy. It wasn’t supposed to be. “No matter if the program is finished, no matter if the school year ends, no matter if you change schools, that senior still looks for you. And they still call you… they keep in touch with us.”That’s something deeper than a program. It’s what happens when a young person finally gets to feel like someone showed up for them without needing anything in return. One offhand comment can change the whole direction of your work.Migdy and Clau spent years running relationship workshops for young adults before they ever thought about a book. The shift happened during one particular workshop, when they asked the room a simple question: who do you know that’s been together for more than ten years and is still happy? Only one or two hands went up. And one participant told them something neither of them expected to hear. “You are the only couple I know that you look happy together.”Out of thirty-something people in the room, that was the answer. It was an admission that healthy, long-term love wasn’t something most people in that room had ever witnessed up close. That’s when the idea of writing something bigger than a workshop started to take shape. Sometimes your audience finds you.The same workshop surfaced another realization neither of them expected. Parents in the room wanted the same guidance their kids were getting. “That means they understand that the parents need this information too. It’s something that they are looking for, that is something missing in their environment.”That was the moment the idea of a book stopped being abstract. Not because they set out to write for a wider audience, but because the wider audience showed up and asked for it first. Ten years is a long time to keep believing in something.What started as notes typed into a phone became a 450-page manuscript, then two separate books, illustrated, edited, translated, and self-published, all while Migdy and Clau kept mentoring, working day jobs, and raising a family. “That is a 10 years project. That idea was maybe 12 years ago. I don’t remember, but we start everything and hold the process. It took us almost 10 years.”Nobody hands you a book after ten years just because you stayed committed. But there’s no book at all if you don’t. AI can’t write the book that took you a decade to live.Clau is direct about what AI can and can’t do, especially for a project built on twenty years of real relationships and hard-won lessons. “There’s nothing in AI related in this book. People need to understand something. There’s a lot of people writing books and they’re writing books with AI. AI does not have the capacity to create something up until now. What it does is that it goes to the books that they have built or fit into the large language model and it creates something related to what you’re asking.”Migdy’s editor ended up teaching her to edit rather than editing for her, because she recognized something worth preserving. “Migdalia is an editor. Migdalia writes better than AI, let’s say, because this book was prior AI.”The book works because it came from two decades of sitting across from real young adults, not from an AI model. Resilience is the only reason the book exists.In 2017, Hurricane Maria destroyed the island Migdy and Clau called home. Clau lost his consulting work overnight. Their son’s therapy, school, and support systems disappeared along with the electricity and water. “We have been kicked out from Puerto Rico after the Hurricane Maria that hit… in 2017.”A childhood friend of Clau’s, reached by landline because there was no cell service left and paid for their plane tickets to Florida. They moved four times in three months. Clau couldn’t find work for six months. And somewhere in the middle of all of it, the manuscript kept moving forward. “That book is so resilient… because the book survived the transition, the moving, the adaptation, the other adaptation that Claudio has to… another state.”The book survived because they refused to let it end. The first time you hold your book, nothing goes the way you pictured it.When the printing company sent a sample ahead of the full order, Migdy and Clau assumed they were finally about to hold the finished book. What arrived instead was a stack of loose, unbound pages, sent only to check paper weight and transparency. “We opened that envelope and what we found were pages... it was so frustrating.”The real moment came later, in Miami, picking up the full shipment straight off the pallet. “We were so exhausted that night... you know, so many people cry when they received the book and opened the book, smell the book. But we don’t have any more tears to cry… we were just watching the book and… we laugh.”Ten years of work, and the reaction wasn’t tears. It was laughter, because there was nothing else left to give it. Authenticity isn’t optional when your reader is young and paying attention.Clau’s advice to other authors comes from two decades of sitting across from teenagers and young adults who have zero patience for anything that isn’t real. “Young adults can smell shit a mile away. So they’ll find out if what you’re putting in the book, or when you’re coaching a young adult, if what you’re saying, you’re standing behind it.”Migdy adds the piece that keeps a project like this from collapsing under its own weight. “Do not reanalyze things because you’re going to paralyze the process. Just flow, flow and flow. Do not try to be perfect because it’s not going to happen. You have settle for being excellent.”And here’s the thing that actually gets a ten-year project across the finish line: “Never forget why for you are doing this. When you feel frustrated, when you feel stuck, keep going, and never forget the reason that put you in that situation.” The book is structured around whatever the reader needs.The book is built around seven chapters: Mommy and Daddy, Life and Stories, Who the F*** Am I, You’re Gonna F*** It Up, Distinctions and Ways of Being, After, and Couple Relationships. But Migdy and Clau don’t even agree on how it should be read. “I tell young adults, if you want to read the book, you go to the index and you read the name of the chapters, and if there’s something that resonates with you, read it and that’s it. Migdalia says, start with the book from the beginning and read it until the end.”Two authors, two voices, two philosophies on how to approach the same material and both work, depending on where the reader happens to be standing in their own life. Closing ReflectionMigdy and Clau didn’t write this book because the timing was right. There was no good time. There was a hurricane, a job loss, a cross-country move, a son who needed support systems that had just been destroyed, and a decade of mentoring squeezed in around all of it. “That is a 10 years project... we start everything and hold the process.”The book is proof that the project you truly believe in doesn’t need perfect conditions to survive. It just needs you to keep showing up for it, one difficult year after another, until it’s finally real. If you’re an author with a story worth sharing, leave a comment and tell us about your work. You deserve the spotlight too. You can find Migdy and Clau’s book at a...
