About
I’m J. Montara.
I was born in Guadalajara, Mexico, and I’ve spent much of my adult life starting over.
At seventeen, I left home. At nineteen, I moved to Canada. I learned English and began building a life of my own. A few years later, I moved to Northern Ireland. I got married and explored different careers as I tried to work out what I wanted from my life.
From the outside, I was independent and ambitious. I could make big decisions and follow through on them.
For years, I got used to adapting to new places and relationships. I was good at figuring out what a situation needed from me. It took me much longer to stop and ask what I needed.
In 2025, my life changed again.
My marriage ended and I lost my cat. I returned to Belfast with a suitcase and debt. I had no job and no clear idea of what came next.
I had to rebuild my life. This time, I gave myself room to work out what I wanted before deciding what came next.
I learned to spend time alone and notice how often I made decisions based on what I thought I should do. I started asking myself what felt right for me and giving that answer more weight.
Over time, I realised I could make a decision without knowing exactly how it would turn out. Even when things went differently from how I’d hoped, I could trust myself to handle what came next.
That’s where J. Montara began.
I recently moved to Manchester and started a new chapter.
Today, I work with women who are used to handling things on their own. They often say yes before checking what they have room for or keep second-guessing decisions long after they’ve made them.
The J. Montara Method is a three-month, one-to-one mentorship. In our weekly calls, we look at where these patterns show up in your life and choose something you can practise between sessions. That might be as simple as saying “Let me check and get back to you” so you have time to decide whether you actually want to say yes.
When I was seventeen, I got a tattoo that said “Be Yourself.”
It took me more than a decade to understand what those two words meant to me.
Learning to trust yourself enough to be who you are.