After months of work, I am happy to share that Parenting Unpacked has entered the development editing phase! 🎉
I hoped to get here a few months earlier. Then my daughter started daycare and we caught every virus in the canton. 😅 The delay was worth it, because the book is better for it.
Development editing is a structural review. Someone reads the whole manuscript and asks whether the chapters are in the right order, whether any section repeats another, and whether a parent who has never heard of me would follow the argument. Typos come later.
Here is what I was working on during that phase:
📖 The order of the chapters. The book now moves through four phases: Leave, Adapt, Anchor and Thrive.
✍️ The stories and the specialists. Families from many countries told me their stories. Psychologists, a paediatrician, a speech pathologist and other specialists checked what I had understood.
🔍 The topics parents kept raising. Your own identity, your relationship with your partner, your child's grief, doctors who do not listen, school meetings, a language you no longer share with your child, and friendships that take longer than you expected.
To everyone who followed along, thank you for your patience. Your messages kept me going.
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Where the Book Is Now
The book has 22 chapters in four phases.
Leave covers the decision to go, including what to do when your partner or your child is not ready.
Adapt covers the first months: losing your sense of who you are as a parent, the strain on a couple, a child who is struggling, the healthcare system, and ordinary days that suddenly feel like exams.
Anchor covers building a home: the table, what it means to be a good parent here, the school, the language gap, pressure from your family back home, and friendship.
Thrive covers what comes after: redefining success, parents who no longer recognise you, a child who has arrived somewhere you have not, and the choice to stay.
What is the one thing about raising children away from home that nobody warned you about? Tell me in the comments. 💛
Jessica Gabrielzyk
Update, October 2026. I wrote this post while the book was still in development editing, and people keep finding it. The book is now available to buy. The full title is Parenting Unpacked: Parenting Through the Loss of Self. In July 2026 it received the "mais vendido" badge on Amazon Brasil, in Importados de Emigração e Imigração.
