How to Live Fully the Life You Did Not Plan - No Matter What

Rebecca Faye Smith Galli is an author and columnist who writes about love, loss, and healing. Surviving significant losses—her seventeen-year-old brother’s death; her son’s degenerative disease and subsequent death; her daughter’s autism; her divorce; and nine days later, her paralysis from transverse myelitis, a rare spinal cord inflammation that began as the flu—has fostered an unexpected but prolific writing career.

The Baltimore Sun published her first column about playing soccer with her son—from the wheelchair. 400 published columns later, she launched Thoughtful Thursdays—Lessons from a Resilient Heart, a weekly column that shares what’s inspired her to stay positive.

Becky Galli was born into a family that valued the power of having a plan. With a pastor father and a stay-at-home mother, her 1960s southern upbringing was bucolic--even enviable. But when her brothe­r, only seventeen, died in a waterskiing accident, the slow unraveling of her perfect family began.

Though grief overwhelmed the family, twenty-year-old Galli forged onward with her life plans–marriag­e, career, and raising a family of her own–one she hoped would be as idyllic as the fam­ily she once knew.          

But life did not go according to plan. There was her son’s degenerative, undiagnos­ed disease and subsequent death; followed by her daughter’s autism diagnosis; her separation; and then, nine days after the divorce was final, the onset of the transverse myelitis that would leave Galli paralyzed from the waist down.     

Despite the waves of adversity, Galli maintained her belief in family, in faith, in loving unconditionally, and in learning to not only accept, but also embrace a life that had veered down a path far different from the one she had envisioned. At once heartbreaking and inspiring, Re­thinking Possible is a story about the power of love over loss and the choices we all make that shape our lives–especially when forced to confront the unimaginable.

You will be inspired by Becky's interview.  Her warmth, her attitude towards life and her encouraging words for all of us as listeners are compelling.  When asked if she ever felt hopeless, here is her response:

I don’t think I’ve ever felt hopeless. I have felt limited, separated from others and the world of mobility that they enjoy. I’ve felt sorry for myself that all of these losses have happened to me. I’ve felt angry that I cannot live the life I’ve planned. But despite the pity and anger, I’ve never lost hope. Sometimes I think it hides from me behind a dark cloud of doubt, perhaps. But it’s never gone entirely. In fact, it keeps me going to find what I can hope for. Sometimes that takes a lot of creativity, and trial and error, and reaching out and asking for help, something that is not (was not) natural for me given my independent nature. I’ve had to learn that others LIKE to help. That it’s ok to ask for it. 

Here is her interview.  You will be encouraged: