Her Son Asked How to Stop Missing Grandma. She Told Him the Only True Thing.
Jean told me about Daniele and I reached out.
Daniele Rocha has lived in Brazil, the United States, South Africa, and now Namibia. She is a mother of three. Eduardo, her eldest, appears in both books. In Maternity Abroad he is a newborn and his mother is navigating a foreign pediatrician in the United States, trying to understand a system that was not built for her. In Chapter 17 of Parenting Unpacked he is older, being tucked into bed after his grandmother went back to Brazil, and he asks the question that stopped me when I read it.
"Mom, where's Grandma? How do I stop missing Grandma?"
Some people carry the whole arc.
I asked Daniele three questions. Her answers are the most practically honest things anyone in the cast has said.
What unexpected strengths have you developed as a parent abroad?
"Parenting expanded my ability to love, to give, and to think of my children first. It strengthened my faith, my patience, and my immune system — after catching every virus my kids brought home. I also became more resilient, more flexible, and learned how to quickly adapt when Plan A no longer works."
The immune system line made me laugh out loud. And then I thought about it more carefully. Because she is describing something real. The specific toughening that happens when you are parenting without backup, without the grandmother who could take the children for a weekend, without the familiar pharmacy where you know what to ask for. You figure it out, you adapt, and somewhere in the process of adapting you become someone who can adapt. That is not a small thing.
What worked and what did not?
"Reading parenting books does not change automatic habits overnight. Learning is just the first step — what really makes the difference is aligning with your partner, setting intentional parenting goals, and sometimes even therapy."
This is the most useful answer in the entire cast series. Because it names the gap between knowing and doing that every parent who has ever read a parenting book knows intimately. You read the book. You understand the concept. And then you are in the moment and the automatic habit runs faster than the knowledge.
What she is describing is the difference between information and integration. The book gives you the language but the work of actually changing is something else entirely.
What do you wish someone had told you?
"That I would not be able to maintain the same professional pace after becoming a parent abroad — at least not in this early childhood phase."
I want to stay with this one.
This is Daniele Rocha 😊
The inherited scorecard that most parents carry includes a professional chapter. The assumption that the career continues at the same pace. That ambition and parenthood coexist without negotiation. That the version of you who was building something professionally before the children arrived is the same version who continues building after.
Abroad, that assumption meets a reality nobody warned about. You are parenting without the village. You are navigating a system that was not built for you. You are doing in one hour what used to take ten minutes because everything here requires more effort. And somewhere underneath all of that the professional pace you inherited as the standard — the one that said this is what a capable person looks like — is still running, still measuring, still telling you that you are falling short.
She is describing the gap between the scorecard she was handed and the life she was actually living. And she named it. Which is the first thing that needs to happen before anything else can.
Daniele's son Eduardo asked how to stop missing Grandma. She told him the truest thing she could: we only miss what we loved.
That answer is in Chapter 17.
These three are hers.
Parenting Unpacked launches June 24th on Amazon.
Jessica Gabrielzyk
