I Should Have Been Asleep.

Written By Jessica Gabrielzyk

Last night, before bed, I did the thing you are not supposed to do. I checked my phone. I know. I know. The blue light, the sleep cycle, all of it. I know.

But I did it anyway, and I am so glad I did, because what I found was the kind of thing that makes you sit up in bed and feel very awake very suddenly.

📱 THE SCENE

Over on Instagram, a page called Casei com um Gringo, which for the non Portuguese speakers here roughly translates to I Married a Foreigner, which is already a great page name, one of their followers had shared her doubts about giving birth abroad versus going back home. That kind of question my book Maternity Abroad exists for.

Screenshot of the story

Adriana Benfica

Adriana is not just any reader. She had already left an Amazon review for the book, which if you know anything about getting people to leave Amazon reviews, you know is practically a miracle and I am deeply grateful every single time. She is also an author, a mother, and an immigrant. Which means she did not recommend this book as an outsider. She recommended it as someone who has lived the exact thing it is about. That changes everything.

When the follower on Casei com um gringo shared her fears about giving birth in a foreign country, Adriana posted a story video. Unprompted. Just here, this helped me, maybe it will help you too.

She said:

“The book Maternity Abroad helps a lot to clear out those doubts. It is good for you to already have an idea. Let us suppose you are thinking about getting pregnant abroad, right. You have this dream of being a mother. So it is a very interesting supporting book that I wanted to leave here.”

— Adriana Benfica, via Instagram story

I read that lying in the dark, phone screen too bright, and I had to put it down for a second just to sit with it.

Because that is exactly what the book was written to be. Not a manual. Not a checklist. A supporting book. Something you reach for when you have a dream and a head full of doubts and no one in the room who has been through it before. Something that says someone else has been here. It has a shape. You are not lost.

She said all of that in a story video, in Portuguese, to people she has never met, about a book she had no obligation to mention. That is generosity. And it meant more than I can put into a blog post at a responsible hour of the night.

📲

I posted the recording of Adriana’s story video on my Instagram. It is in Brazilian Portuguese, so if that is your language, go watch it. And if it is not, follow me anyway. My bio is in English. I think I am funnier in English. You can be the judge.

Adriana, thank you. Thank you!!! For the review, for the story, for recommending the book to someone who needed it, as someone who has needed it herself. That is the whole point. That is why I wrote it in the first place.

And to whoever that follower was who shared her doubts about giving birth abroad, I hope you found some of your answers. The doubt you felt is real and it is valid and you are not the first person to stand in it. You will not be the last. But you do not have to stand there alone.

Now I am going to put my phone down. For real this time.

With a full heart and tired eyes,

Jessica Gabrielzyk

✦ MATERNITY ABROAD · BECOMING A MOTHER IN A FOREIGN LAND · AVAILABLE ON AMAZON ✦

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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