Why You Should NOT Buy My Book.

May 14

A mother saw the final cover illustration for Parenting Unpacked and sent me a message. She was kind and thoughtful. It ended with a hug emoji, which is the warmest possible way to tell an author something they need to hear.

She told me what she would have chosen instead. Parents and children, hands held, all of them walking forward together. And honestly, it’s a beautiful image. But that made crystal clear: that image is a real book. It is just not mine.

Her book is about the family. How it holds together going forward. That book exists and there are good versions of it. If that is what you need, I will genuinely cheer you toward it.

My book is about the parent inside that family. The one who moved countries, learned a new language, found the school, the doctor, the supermarket, the playgroup, held the whole thing together with both hands, and somewhere in the middle of all of it, without meaning to, lost themselves.

Nobody warned you that part was coming. You look up one day and the person you were before the move is harder to find than she used to be.

She mentioned she has never had coffee in her life. Fair enough. Some people are built differently and I respect it entirely.

But if you have ever put your cup down to deal with something and found it stone cold an hour later, and that has been every day for years, and you have started to suspect the coffee is not actually about the coffee — This book is for you.

The cover is a “Best Parent” mug, tipping. Someone is reaching for it. The coffee is already gone.

I am grateful for that message. Genuinely. She said the quiet part out loud. She told me what she expected a parenting book to look like. And in doing that, she showed me exactly who this book is not for and sharpened everything I know about who it is.

Parenting Unpacked is not for the parent who sees themselves in the hands-held, walking-forward image.

It is for the parent who sees themselves in the coffee.

If that is you, I wrote every single page of this for you. And I think you already know.

With honesty, always,

Jessica Gabrielzyk

✦ PARENTING UNPACKED · AVAILABLE ON AMAZON 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.

Why You Should NOT Buy My Book.

Leave. Adapt. Anchor. Thrive. The Four Stages Nobody Maps for You.