I’m Still Processing This…

Written By Jessica Gabrielzyk

Some moments in a writer's life feel almost surreal — like something you once dreamed about quietly and never quite dared to say out loud. This is one of those moments for me.

My book, Maternity Abroad: Becoming a Mother in a Foreign Land, was recently mentioned by not one but two Brazilian writers. As someone who comes from Brazil, that alone meant more than I can express. There is something deeply meaningful about being seen by voices from the place that shaped you.

Then something even more unexpected happened. During a live broadcast for Coragem Magazine, journalist and Head of Publication Maria Evana Kens referred to me and my work as:

"[…] uma pessoa super inteligente … [o livro] é um best-seller em muitos países."

"A very smart person … [the book] is a bestseller in many countries."

— MARIA EVANA KENS, CORAGEM MAGAZINE

Photo of the live between Ana Pultera and Maria Kens

To write about motherhood abroad — about building a life far from where you were born — and then to have that work recognized in your home country, is something I will never take for granted.

Writing can be a lonely process. So much of it happens quietly, between doubt and hope, in moments when you wonder whether your words will ever truly connect. And then one day they travel across oceans, across borders, and somehow find their way back home.

To the Brazilian literary community, thank you. To the readers who have carried this story into new spaces, thank you. And to Maria, for your generosity and recognition, thank you.

This moment humbles me deeply. Stories travel farther than we ever can. And sometimes they return to where everything began.

You can watch the live mention on my Instagram by clicking here.

With a full heart,

Jessica Gabrielzyk

Jessica Gabrielzyk

Jessica Gabrielzyk is a Brazilian writer living in Switzerland. She moved there with her husband and daughter, who was three months old at the time and had strong opinions about the whole thing even then.

She writes about change.

The visible kind and the kind that happens inside a person, while everything on the outside looks fine.

Her first book, Maternity Abroad, explored what it means to become a mother far from the system you trusted. It has reached readers in more than fifteen countries across five continents. Parenting Unpacked, her second book, follows the experience of parenting through major life disruption, whether that's an international move, a career loss, a new baby, or a life that simply stops responding the way it used to. My First American Coloring Book was created to help toddlers engage with daily life in the United States through play and familiar imagery.

She is a member of SIETAR, the Society for Intercultural Education, Training and Research, and the International Academy of Brazilian Literature.

She writes for the parent who is still inside it, getting through the day, and wondering somewhere underneath all of it who they are becoming.

When she is not writing, she is walking forty minutes uphill with a stroller, telling herself the exercise is the point.

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