One is Good. Two is Chef’s Kiss. 🧑‍🍳💋

Parenting abroad book
Written By Jessica Gabrielzyk

One foot to the side and one to the other with a movement of the hips. No, it is not a chicken dance. It is a someone wrote a review for Parenting Unpacked dance. It is meant to be a samba, but I am okay with people saying it looks like I have a stiff neck.

So let me explain. Julianna wrote this in a Facebook post, which honestly already had me on my feet:

“Bought and downloaded on Kindle this morning and already finished! Such a great read! I really appreciate how much you covered in an easy to read and relatable way.”

And then I saw this on Goodreads. I mean 🥹 chicken stiff neck dance all day long:

“Such a relevant book for those parenting in a different country or culture. I couldn’t put it down once I started because I felt so heard. So many times I thought ‘oh so it wasn’t just me’. Definitely recommend for anyone parenting as an expat and it doesn’t even matter if you’ve been doing it for years you will still connect with it so much.”

People sometimes do not realise how much reviews and comments like this help independent authors.

The endorsements for Parenting Unpacked from Ruth E. Van Reken, co-author of Third Culture Kids, Dr. Débora Pasin, and Rima Elahi-Syed meant the world to me. But when intercultural psychologist Ana Lúcia Cunha and reader Luisa Cordeiro say something, and then Julianna adds her thoughts, this kind of feedback helps way beyond visibility and credibility. It helps authors understand the path for the next books, what landed, and what expat parents actually needed.

So thank you. Genuinely.

If you would like to leave a review for Parenting Unpacked or any of my books, you can post on the platform where you bought it, on Goodreads, on the Google book panel, or drop a message in the comments section below. Every single one gets read and every single one matters.

Jessica Gabrielzyk

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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.

Next

What the Odyssey and a Swiss Diplomat Have in Common.