Rethinking Possible

A Memoir of Resilience

Published by She Writes Press
Distributed by Simon & Schuster

About The Book

Rebecca Galli grew up believing in the power of having a plan. Raised in a loving southern family by a deep-thinking pastor father and an ever-positive, devoted mother, she imagined a future shaped by faith, family, hard work, and stability. But when her seventeen-year-old brother was killed in a waterskiing accident, the carefully ordered world she trusted began to unravel.

Over the years, Becky faced one devastating challenge after another: her son’s degenerative disease and death, her daughter’s autism diagnosis, separation from her husband, and finally, just nine days after her divorce was finalized, the onset of transverse myelitis, a rare inflammation of the spinal cord that left her paralyzed from the waist down.

Yet Rethinking Possible is not simply a memoir about tragedy.

With warmth, humor, honesty, and unwavering faith, Becky shares what it means to keep loving, adapting, and living fully even after life no longer resembles the future you once imagined. As a disabled parent raising two children with disabilities while navigating profound grief and physical loss, she discovered that meaning and possibility can still exist within ever-changing limits.

At its heart, Rethinking Possible is a story about the power of love over loss—and the choices we make when life veers far from our plans. For anyone navigating heartbreak, caregiving, chronic illness, disability, grief, or unexpected change, this memoir offers something rare: grounded hope that does not deny pain, but refuses to be defined by it.

About The Author

Rebecca (Becky) 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 affecting one in a million—has fostered an unexpected but prolific writing career. In 2000, The Baltimore Sun published her first column about playing soccer with her son—from the wheelchair that launched her From Where I Sit newspaper column. Her books, Rethinking Possible – A Memoir of Resilience (2017) and Morning Fuel – Daily Inspirations to Stretch Your Mind Before Starting Your Day (2024) reflect what she believes: “Life can be good—no matter what.” With over 400 published columns, she continues to write Thoughtful Thursdays—Lessons from a Resilient Heart (www.beckygalli.com/signup). A Morehead-Cain Scholar at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, she was formerly employed by IBM, where she was the recipient of the Golden Circle award for marketing excellence. Becky resides in Lutherville, Maryland, outside of Baltimore.

Product Details

  • Publisher: She Writes Press (June 13, 2017)
  • Length: 330 pages
  • ISBN13: 9781631522208

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