About Dear Wander

Dear Wander is a small, deliberate thing built by one person who needed it first.

Why this exists

I'm Gabriela. I trained as a computer engineer at the Universidad Simón Bolívar in Caracas, and for a long time I built things that were clever without asking whether they were kind.

Dear Wander started somewhere more personal than a product roadmap. It came out of my own years of managing anxiety, and of noticing how often the phone was both the reach for relief and the thing that left me more frayed than before. The scroll was never really about the content. It was about avoiding a feeling. And every app I tried to help me stop treated me like a problem to be disciplined: red numbers, broken streaks, locked screens that made me feel worse and scroll more.

I wanted to build the opposite. Something gentle. Something that assumes you're a capable person having a hard moment, not a failure who needs to be punished into behaving. I care especially about making that softness available to women, who so often carry the quiet weight of anxiety and are handed tools built around shame.

The idea, in one line

A warm sixty-second breathing pause before the apps that pull at you. No lock, no timer, no report card. Just a small gap between the reach and the tap, where the choice becomes yours again. Most of the time, after a breath, you choose something else.

How I write these articles

I'm an engineer and a founder, not a doctor. What I can do is read the research carefully and translate it into plain language you can actually use, with sources you can check yourself. When I cite a study, a statistic, or a mechanism, I link to where it comes from. I use writing tools to help me draft and structure, but every article is shaped, fact-checked, and edited by me, and reflects what I've genuinely learned building this and living it.

If something here is ever wrong, I want to fix it. You can reach me on Instagram at @dearwander.app.

A note on health

Dear Wander and the writing on this site are for education and general wellbeing. They are not medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment, and breathing practices are not a substitute for care from a qualified professional. If you're struggling with anxiety, sleep, or compulsive phone use in a way that affects your life, please talk to a doctor or a licensed therapist.

Dear Wander is coming to iOS. If any of this feels familiar, you're the person I'm building it for. Join the waitlist and I'll write to you when it's ready.