About This Substack
From Montana to Portugal
(or, how I sold everything and started over in Europe—with stories, tears, courage, and cappuccinos)
If you’re craving a life that feels more like yours, you’re in the right place.
I’m Janelle Holden—award-winning journalist, life coach, and accidental expat. After 20+ years of success, burnout, and reinvention in the U.S., I sold nearly everything I owned, moved abroad, and started over in Portugal.
What began as a personal adventure has become something deeper:
A place to explore what it means to rewrite your life at any age—with humor, heartbreak, and hope.
What You’ll Find Here
💌 Honest, hilarious essays about reinvention, travel, grief, healing, and joy—delivered every 10 days.
🔐 Passport Confessions: exclusive audio/video/personal stories just for paid subscribers.
🎓 My full course on How to Move to Portugal (practical + soulful).
🗺️ Travel itineraries, reflections, and behind-the-scenes vignettes from life in Europe.
🎟️ First dibs on future retreats, coaching offers, and reader events.
This isn’t just a travel newsletter—it’s a home for anyone carving a new path, asking deeper questions, or learning how to be fully alive again.
Whether you're sipping wine in Lisbon, reading from a small town in the Midwest, or Googling “how to move to Portugal with a dog,” you’re welcome here.
About Me
I’m a former journalist turned storyteller and soul-searcher. I’ve helped hundreds of people transform their lives and businesses as a life and business coach, and now I’m applying those same tools to my own journey—this time with much less hustle, and a whole lot more truth.
I believe we all get more than one life in a lifetime.
This Substack is about living all of them—out loud.
