It didn’t happen at the airport. It didn’t happen when I dropped my bags at my place or when I had my first coffee looking out over the city. It happened at 8:47pm on a hill in Lisbon with a dead phone, the sun going down, and absolutely no idea how to get home.

This is the first Field Note from Lisbon.

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Not adjusted them. Not tweaked them. Doubled them.

That's how today started. And because I have apparently become a person who processes things by writing to the internet, here we are.

New laws, tweaked plan

Here's what happened, for those just tuning in to the Portugal immigration conversation: earlier this spring, Portugal's Parliament passed a significant revision to its Nationality Law. The minimum residency requirement for citizenship — the amount of time you have to live legally in Portugal before you can apply for a passport — has been extended from five years to ten for most non-EU foreign nationals. That means Americans, Canadians, Brits, and most other non-European immigrants are now looking at a decade of residency before citizenship is even on the table. EU citizens go from three years to seven. CPLP nationals — people from Portuguese-speaking countries like Brazil, Cape Verde, Angola — go from three to seven as well. The law was signed in early May and is waiting to be published in Portugal's official gazette before it formally takes effect.

The stated reason is pressure. Portugal now has approximately 1.5 million foreign residents, accounting for nearly 15 percent of its total population — a number that has grown dramatically in the last several years as the country became a destination for remote workers, retirees, and people like me who looked at their lives and decided Europe made more sense. The infrastructure, the public services, the housing market — all of it has felt the strain. Doubling the citizenship timeline is the government's answer to that.

Whether it's the right answer is a longer conversation. What I know is what it means for me personally: I am one and a half years into this process. I have been dreaming about this move for thirteen years. And this morning I had to sit with the news that the finish line I had been running toward just got moved five years further away.

I want to talk about something that doesn't come up enough in the immigration content I consume, which is mostly practical and optimistic and full of people who figured it out and are now posting aesthetically from their Lisbon apartments.

I want to talk about how alone this process makes me feel.

Not the logistics. The logistics are hard but they are solvable — you make the spreadsheet, you read the forums, you find the lawyer, you figure it out.

What's harder to solve is the feeling of doing something this significant in near-total isolation. Not geographical isolation — I am surrounded by people I love.

But there is a particular kind of alone that comes from wanting something that the people around you can't quite see or follow.

My friends are good people. They are also busy with their lives, their partners, their children, their jobs, their own interior worlds that have nothing to do with Portuguese residency law. And I don't fault them for that — I don't think I should be the center of anyone's attention, and I'm not looking for that. But there is a difference between not being the center of attention and feeling like what you're building simply doesn't register.

When I got turned away in New York in January, I came home and nobody really asked. When I spent six weeks in Mexico trying to recover from that and figure out if I still had the energy to do this, most people didn't know that was what I was doing. When I renewed my passport in March and drove to Miami and felt that quiet, stubborn little surge of I'm still going — I told almost no one, because there was almost no one to tell who would understand what it meant.

That's not a complaint. It's just the truth of doing something that lives mostly inside you.

Immigration isn't like getting a promotion or having a baby — there's no moment that maps onto a shape people already recognize. There's no announcement that makes sense.

It's just years of invisible work and invisible setbacks and invisible decisions

The community of people who actually get it exists mostly online, in comment sections and Substack posts and DMs from strangers who are also waiting on appointments in the right jurisdiction.

Which is why, when I read this news two weeks ago, the first thing I felt wasn't logistical panic. It was grief. And the second thing I felt was that I had nowhere obvious to put it. I couldn't call someone and expect them to understand why five years becoming ten matters so much, why after everything — the preparation, the wrong city, the Mexico detour, the slow crawl back to believing in this — this particular piece of news lands the way it does. Like something quietly breaking. Like the universe asking, again, how much do you actually want this.

So I came here instead. To the only place where I know the answer to that question matters to someone other than me.

I have a lot more to say about all of this — what the new law actually means for people who are already mid-process like me, the visa routes I'm eligible for and how this changes the math on each of them, and what I'm actually choosing and why. I'll break all of that down properly, on camera, when I land.

For now I just needed to show up and be honest with you. This one hurt. And I'm still getting on that plane.

— Samantha

Next up when I'm back in Lisbon: the full visa breakdown, what the 10-year rule means if you're already in process, and the longer story of what I'm building there. Thank you for being the people who get it. This is Well & Wild.

Sri Lanka was a no, Portugal was a yes, my visa appointment was days away and I felt like I was no longer manifesting but moving.

And then New York happened.

I got to the Portugal visa office in New York City January 15th with a folder full of paperwork, months of preparation, an FBI background check, fingerprints — all of it done, all of it organized, all of it ready.

Things were feeling good and moving along fine but changed faster than I could comprehend. After waiting to head into a private office for my appointment, a man behind the desk told me he couldn’t even see me.

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Last Monday, I turned down a 3-month teaching contract in southern Sri Lanka.

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I’ve been in limbo lately — that strange space between what’s ending and what’s not quite ready to begin.

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Yesterday, I stood barefoot in my kitchen, the cabinets empty, the fridge spotless. The house didn’t echo yet, but it was close.

For the first time, the space felt like something else: a threshold.

This weekend, I officially began the process of leaving Florida. My home for the past 15 years, my son’s childhood nest, the place I have worked, lived, divorced, played and reinvented myself in over and over again.

It’s time. It’s soooo past time for me to go. I know that Florida won’t even come to my mind for what will be at least a year abroad.

I’ve been packing and deep cleaning. Letting go of furniture. Making space for a new chapter that doesn’t fully exist yet, but has already begun.

It’s one thing to talk about change. It’s another to step right into it, on your terms.

I’ve known this was coming. But even as a planner, even as a journaler, there’s no real preparation for leaving the life you built behind—voluntarily, lovingly, but still with weight.

This summer, I will officially launch my Well & Wild Tour —a storytelling and wellness tour across the globe. It’s movement. It’s softness. It’s a ritual. It’s remembrance.

But more than anything, it’s about expanding myself in new places. Listening. Moving slower. Not proving, just living.

You’ll see more from me in the coming weeks.

I’ll share Field Notes—short moments from the road—and Postcards from the Wild, which pair Pilates flows, travel reflections, affirmations, and small rituals from wherever I land.

This space is my journal in motion. And if you’ve been craving softness in a loud world, or trying to write yourself into a new chapter, you’ll feel at home here.

In two weeks, I leave the U.S.
First stop: Portugal. There are so many exciting things I have planned there. I can’t wait to share more this week and next before boarding that plane in Miami. It’s all taking shape, despite some hurdles, my dream of expat life is finally happening.

If you’ve ever thought about leaving it all behind, following your lifelong dreams, indulging in adventure, and sinking into solitude, nature, and wellness… this is for you.

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Thanks for being here.
The next chapter starts now.

— Samantha