I write about change.
That is my slogan and it is true and it is also a little bit funny when you know me because I am the person who takes the same route every single time.
I am not a creature of habit in the grand sense. If you tell me there is a faster way I am already lost before you finish the sentence. My brain does not update maps mid-journey. It commits to the route and that is the end of the conversation.
And then I tell everyone else to get lost.
I mean it as a compliment. Getting lost is how you find the things that were never on the map.
So why do I take the same route home?
The person who writes about identity migration and the loss of felt competence and the specific courage of showing up in a place that was not built for you is also the person who has a preferred supermarket and gets anxious when the layout changes. Both things are true. I have checked.
I love change when I choose it. The unboxing and the fresh start and the moment the life you built somewhere else becomes the story you tell about who you used to be before you became who you are now.
What I do not love is change that arrives mid-sentence. The faster route someone describes while I am already driving, the reorganised supermarket, the plan that changes after I have committed to the plan. That kind of change makes my brain do something that is technically anxiety but feels more like buffering. I am processing. I need a moment. I will be fine. Do not show me an alternative route right now.
Because here is the thing about change that I keep coming back to. The people who navigate it best are not the ones who feel no anxiety. They are the ones who go anyway, who box everything up even though they hate boxing, who take the new route even though their brain is buffering, who arrive somewhere they did not plan and find it beautiful.
I write about those people. I am one of those people. The slogan is true.
I write about change. The geographical kind and the internal kind and the kind that arrives mid-sentence while you are driving and makes you momentarily furious before you find the most amazing place you have never been.
And the reason I write about all of it, the nonfiction books, the fiction that is coming, the coloring book for the child who needs a map before she needs directions, all of it, is this.
Nobody should have to carry the experience of becoming alone because someone already wrote it down.
Get lost. I mean it.
Books
For women navigating pregnancy far from home, and determined to do it well.
This book is that map. There is no other one like it.
For parents who can feel something is off, even without a word for it yet.
This book is for parents who notice that.
A simple, screen-free tool that helps children recognize and connect with everyday American life.
This book bridges languages and cultures.
Follow The Stories
I asked Janaina de Carvalho the neuropsychological questions because I wanted to understand what was actually happening inside the head of the woman who cannot find the heating in a Swiss apartment because it comes from the floor and she has been looking at walls.