In That Was Not the Plan, Gabriella Bogialla captures one of life’s hardest truths: joy and pain do not always arrive separately. Sometimes they live in the same place, in the same memory, and even in the same heart. Her memoir shows that healing is not about choosing one feeling over another. It is about learning how to carry both without letting either one erase the truth of what happened.
Gabriella’s story moves through love, marriage, motherhood, betrayal, divorce, friendship, and rebuilding. What makes the book so moving is its honesty. She does not pretend that beautiful memories stop being beautiful just because they are followed by heartbreak. She also does not soften the pain of being hurt by someone she once trusted. Instead, she allows both realities to exist. There was love. There was damage. There was laughter. There was grief. There were homes filled with warmth, and there were places that later became painful to remember.
This emotional balance gives the memoir its strength. Many books about heartbreak focus only on the collapse, but That Was Not the Plan also honours what came before and what came after. Gabriella writes about the friendships that held her together, the places that shaped her, and the love she poured into being a mother even while she was trying to survive her own pain. Her son becomes one of the clearest reasons she keeps standing. Motherhood does not remove her grief, but it gives her a reason to move through it with care, restraint, and courage.
The title itself reflects the heart of the book. Life did not follow the plan. The marriage did not become what she expected. The homes she loved did not all remain safe. The future she imagined changed shape without asking permission. Yet within that disruption, Gabriella finds a different kind of power. Not the loud kind. Not the kind that denies pain. It is the quiet power of continuing, learning, and slowly becoming whole again.
Readers who have lived through betrayal, divorce, relocation, motherhood under pressure, or emotional loss will recognise the truth in these pages. They will also find comfort in the way Gabriella refuses to let pain have the final word. Her story reminds us that healing does not mean forgetting what hurt us. It means being able to remember it without losing ourselves.
That Was Not the Plan is a heartfelt memoir about resilience, identity, love, and the brave work of rebuilding a life. It is a powerful read for anyone who has ever had to hold joy in one hand and pain in the other, and still keep walking.
