Love does not always arrive when life is calm, simple, or ready. Sometimes it comes when the heart is still healing, when responsibilities are heavy, when distance is unavoidable, or when the future is already complicated. It can feel beautiful and painful at once, as if life has given something precious but placed it just beyond reach.
That Was Not the Plan by Gabriella Bogialla explores this emotional truth with honesty and tenderness. The memoir follows a woman whose life is shaped by love, divorce, motherhood, grief, migration, and the difficult process of beginning again. Through each chapter, Gabriella reflects on the relationships, places, and people that changed her, including the moments when love appeared at a time when holding on was not easy.
One of the strongest themes in the book is timing. Gabriella shows that love can be real and still not be simple. A person can enter your life and bring comfort, passion, hope, and warmth, yet circumstances can still create distance. Careers, family responsibilities, emotional wounds, and unfinished healing can all stand between two people who care deeply for each other. The pain does not always come from a lack of love. Sometimes it comes from the fact that love alone cannot solve everything.
This is what makes Gabriella’s story so relatable. She does not present love as a fairy tale where every feeling leads to forever. Instead, she shows love as something human, fragile, and complex. It can lift us when we least expect it, but it can also expose the parts of us that are still afraid, still wounded, and still searching for stability. When love arrives at the wrong time, it forces us to ask difficult questions. Do we hold on? Do we let go? Do we wait? Do we protect our peace? Do we choose the person, or do we choose the life we must keep building?
For Gabriella, love is never only romantic. It is also found in motherhood, family, friendship, and the homes she carries within her. Her son becomes a grounding force. Her family becomes a shelter. Her friends become chosen family. These relationships remind readers that even when romantic love does not unfold the way we hoped, love itself does not disappear. It changes form, expands, and sometimes returns through the people who remain.
That Was Not the Plan is a moving memoir for anyone who has loved someone at the wrong time, waited for closure, or wondered why something beautiful could not last. Gabriella’s journey reminds us that love can still matter, even when it does not stay. Some people arrive to teach us, awaken us, or show us what our hearts are still capable of feeling.
Sometimes love does not come to complete the plan. Sometimes it comes to reveal who we are becoming.
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