I Posted Casually on Instagram. I Am Still Shook.

May 8

I posted on Instagram about Valencia. Casually. The way you post when you have news but you are also still processing the news and you are not sure how big a deal to make of it so you just put it out there and see what happens.

What happened was this.

💬 WHAT CAME BACK

@misaki.intercultural - Arrasou demais!!!!! Parabéns!!!! 🎈🎉
@anacunha.psi - Que fantástico, minha querida! Você está arrasando. Parabéns! 👏👏👏🥰
@janainacarvalho.psicologa - Jessicaaaaa vc arrasou! Parabéns e muito sucesso 👏
@moinsaopaulo - Super merecido, congrats! Vai ser incrível! You go, girl! 💪🏼❤️👏🏼🤩
@daianeweber.ca - Mulher, que arraso! Parabéns e muito sucesso!
@danibalieiroamorim - Muito feliz por vc!!! Arrasa ❤️❤️❤️
@margery.psi - Que demais!!! Parabéns! Arrasou!
@valeriamacedoescrita - 👏🏻 Arrasa!
@gingalanguage - 👏👏 maravilha! Arrasa!
@bruno.bcamargo - Uhuu, que demais Je! Parabéns e muito mais sucesso sempre! ✨
@janyilustra - 😍😍😍😍😍👏👏👏👏
@psicologa.melfarina - Parabéns 👏🏻
@bella_swiss_samoyed - 👏👏👏👏
@marlonm88 - Show! Sucesso 🙌
@hectorgarcia.jpg - Boa! 💪🏻👏🏻👏🏻
Giovanna Cocco - Parabéns minha amiga querida! Você merece ❤️

Immediately fifteen comments. Psychologists, illustrators, writers, researchers, friends, strangers. In Portuguese, in English, in emojis that said more than words. All because I casually mentioned that Parenting Unpacked is going to be part of a conversation at an international congress in Valencia the day after it launches on Amazon.

I posted casually. They did not respond casually. And I have been staring at my phone since.

I keep saying I do this alone. No team, no Avengers. And then something like this happens and I remember that alone was never quite accurate. This is the team. Right here.

Daiane Weber, who wrote to me about my text in Mulheres em Travessia and said she felt less alone in the anguish — she was there. Dani Balieiro Amorim, who called the coloring book 100% recommended on launch day — she was there. Jany, who illustrated the coloring book — she was there. People who have been part of this story from different chapters, all showing up in the same comment section on a casual Tuesday post.

That is not nothing. That is everything, actually.

To everyone who commented, liked, saved, or just saw it and felt something — thank you. You are why the casual post is never just a casual post.

Parenting Unpacked: Parenting Through the Loss of Self launches June 24th on Amazon. I present at SIETAR Valencia on June 25th. And apparently I have a whole community watching. Still shook. Still grateful.

Shook. In the best way.

Jessica Gabrielzyk

✦ COMMUNITY · INSTAGRAM · SIETAR VALENCIA · PARENTING UNPACKED · JUNE 24TH ✦

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.

I Posted Casually on Instagram. I Am Still Shook.

💬 WHAT CAME BACK

Parenting Unpacked Is Going to Valencia.