The SIETAR Valencia congress starts today. Here Is the First Part of the Speech.

The Things Nobody Names.
Written By Jessica Gabrielzyk

I have been preparing for this for months. The research is done, the structure is clear, and the story about my daughter saying piscine instead of any of the four countries she actually has a connection to is in there too. The speech is ready. The slides are minimal. Ruth Van Reken presents after me on the children's side of the same story.

I am sharing the first part of the speech here before I give it. Because this is the blog where I document things honestly, and this presentation is the most public version of everything this blog has been building toward. The concepts that live here in essays and cast posts and neuropsychology interviews are going into a room of intercultural professionals tomorrow in Valencia. That feels worth marking.

The speech opens with my family tree, which is essentially a migration map. My dad's side from Spain, Italy, Poland, and Austria. My mum's side from Germany and Hungary. Growing up in Brazil with sausage and strudel on Sundays instead of feijoada. Moving to Australia at eighteen. Portugal, Ireland, Portugal again, Switzerland. The diaper bag on the side.

It covers three frictions. The loss of felt competence, which is what happens when the invisible layer of knowing that tells you what to do next completely disappears in a new country. The inherited scorecard, which is the set of standards you were measured against before you ever chose them, running in the background of every parenting decision you make in a place that has completely different standards. And identity migration, which does not announce itself and sometimes happens faster in your children than in you.

That last one I know because my daughter told me she was Swiss. She is three. She was born in Portugal. She has no Swiss passport. I gave her four other options. She chose Switzerland and then she said piscine, which means swimming pool in French, and I decided we did not need to have that conversation yet.

You can download the full first part of the speech below. Ruth presents the children's side after me. I will write about what happened in Valencia when I get back.

Jessica Gabrielzyk

Download the first part of the SIETAR Valencia presentation
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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May June 24th Be With You. Parenting Unpacked Is Available Today.