I am starting a book about burnout.

May 23

I want to be transparent about the conditions under which this decision was made.

It is May 2026. Parenting Unpacked launches on Amazon on June 24th. The day after that I am presenting at the SIETAR Valencia España Congress 2026. Online. From my desk. In Switzerland. I have been writing blog posts, updating press kits, preparing a presentation, managing a publishing house, parenting a toddler who has recently decided that her primary contribution to any conversation is the word tired, and somewhere in between all of that I thought: you know what this moment needs? A new book.

About burnout.

I am aware of how this looks.

I would like to say the timing is a coincidence. I would like to say I woke up one morning feeling rested and clear-headed and the idea arrived gently. I would like to say a lot of things.

What actually happened is that I have been living inside the research for a while now. The acculturation stress. The loss of felt competence. The inherited scorecard that tells you to keep going when everything is telling you to stop. The expat mother at 3am who is not panicking, just cannot find the edge of the feeling. The toddler who learned the word tired before she learned the word happy.

At some point you realise you are not just writing about this. You are in it.

Which is, I suppose, exactly the right place to start a book about it.

I would like to say I do not have a title yet. But I do. I also have a structure. I am not telling you either of those things yet. But I wanted you to know they exist.

More soon. Possibly after a nap.

Jessica Gabrielzyk

P.S. My toddler just told me she is tired. She is three years and four months old. She has had plenty of time to know better. We are fine.

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 am starting a book about burnout.

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