Something Has Changed…

Written By Jessica Gabrielzyk

Okay. Let's talk. Something changed with Parenting Unpacked. Before you panic — the work is good. The quality is good. Nobody lost any data, no chapters were harmed, and the manuscript did not fall into the ocean. What changed is the name, the content structure, and how it's delivered. That's it. That's the whole dramatic reveal. You're welcome.

Now, here's where it gets fun. Because the journey to the final title was… a journey. Let me walk you through it. Please hold your applause until the end.

DRAFT 1 · BLESS ITS HEART

Parenting Unpacked: This Is Not a Relocation Manual

Solid. Accurate. Also basically told only people who moved countries that this book existed. A noble beginning. A narrow one.

↓

DRAFT 2 · GETTING WARMER

Parenting Unpacked: The Untold Truth About Raising Kids Abroad

Better! More mysterious! Still had the word "abroad" in it, which meant anyone who hadn't crossed a border yet might still scroll past. Almost.

↓

FINAL · WE'RE DONE. THIS IS IT.

Parenting Unpacked: Parenting Through the Loss of Self

There it is. No geography required. Just the truth.

Draft of the Manuscript for the book Parenting Unpacked

Screenshot of the book draft

Why the change?

Because I had really good content in my hands, and I kept packaging it in a way that made people think it was only for them if they'd recently packed boxes and navigated a foreign customs form. Which — with respect to customs forms — is not the point.

Yes, the book's lens is on migration. But the feeling underneath it? That doesn't care where you live.

You were competent yesterday. You didn't have to think about most things. You just moved through the day and it worked. Then something changed the room.

For some parents it's a move to a new country. For others it's a newborn, a diagnosis, a career that disappears, a teenager who has gone somewhere you can't follow. The trigger is different. The experience underneath it isn't.

You're still expected to lead. Decisions slow down. Small tasks carry weight they never held before. And everything you absorbed about what good parenting looks like gets louder — precisely when it no longer applies.

Parenting Unpacked follows that experience through the stories of families across six countries. It has four phases. Most people live through this without knowing it has a shape.

PHASE 01 - Leave

PHASE 02 - Adapt

PHASE 03 - Anchor

PHASE 04 - Thrive

This is not a book about how to fix it. It's the company you needed when you were standing in the baby aisle, hand on the cart, not sure what the rules were anymore.

The name changed. The structure evolved. The delivery got sharper. But the reason this book exists? That never moved an inch.

Stay tuned — because we are very close to putting this into your hands. And that, honestly, is the whole point.

With a full heart (and a finalized title),

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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