I Was Supposed to Be an Au Pair in America. I Ended Up Here Instead.

Jun 19

I was supposed to be an au pair in the United States.

That was the plan. I had applied, prepared, imagined the version of my life that would happen there. And then it did not work out. At the time it felt like a door closing. It was not. It was the thing that got me to Australia.

Australia gave me the English that changed everything. Then the marketing diploma. Then the degree. Then seven years in a marketing department where I learned how to build something from nothing. Then Portugal, Ireland, then Switzerland, then a daughter, then three books, then a copy of Maternity Abroad hand-delivered to the British Library in London with no confirmation of receipt, which I am still waiting for, if anyone sees it there please send me a picture.

None of that was in the original plan. The original plan was babysitting in America.

You tell me what is happening to my face in this picture… no idea.

I have been thinking about this a lot since I watched a reel before bed a few weeks ago. A woman was talking about luck. Most people think luck is random. I will admit I was one of those people. She said people who seem lucky did not get lucky by accident. They increased their surface area of luck. The formula: luck equals doing times telling. Doing without telling means you built something nobody knows exists. Telling without doing means you talk about things you have not made yet. Together, that is where luck has somewhere to land.

I have been doing and telling, in various combinations, since I was ten years old and told a friend about a dream I had and watched her face while she listened.

The au pair job that did not work out was not bad luck. It was the first door that sent me toward a better one. I have stopped calling things that do not work out failures. They are redirections. Every time something has not gone the way I planned, a better version has shown up somewhere else. Usually somewhere I was not looking.

I do not know what Parenting Unpacked will do after June 24th. I do not know what the next book will be, or which library will not confirm receipt of it, or which AI will compare me to which filmmaker. I do not know if the surface area will be enough or when the luck will land.

What I know is the method. Keep doing. Keep telling. When a door closes, find the one it was pointing you toward.

I was supposed to be an au pair in America. I ended up here instead.

I am fine with that.

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 Was Supposed to Be an Au Pair in America. I Ended Up Here Instead.

There Is a Book I Am Supposed to Be Writing. I Am Writing a Different One.

Wait. What? Parenting Unpacked Is Now Available for Pre-Order.