Rebecca Faye Smith Galli is a freelance writer and columnist who has faced continuing challenges in extraordinary ways. In 1997, her busy life as a dedicated community activist and mother of four children—two of whom had special needs—was dramatically affected by paralysis from transverse myelitis, a rare inflammation of the spinal cord.
Reflecting on these and other life-altering circumstances, Becky’s freelance publishing career began in 2000 with an op-ed piece for the Baltimore Sun. She has written over four hundred columns on family life and resilient living including “From Where I Sit,” slice-of-life musings for a Baltimore Sun weekly, “Looking Homeward,” a continuation of her father’s column for Huntington, West Virginia’s Herald-Dispatch, “Tuesdays with Madison,” reflections of parenting an adult daughter with autism for www.autismafter16.com, and a weekly newsletter, Thoughtful Thursdays, Lessons from a Resilient Heart. She also periodically contributes to the Baltimore Sun’s Op-Ed page, Midlife Boulevard, Nanahood and The Mighty.
The parent of a daughter with autism, Becky became an officer and founding board member in 2000 for Pathfinders for Autism, a Baltimore-based non-profit organization whose mission is to improve the lives of those with autism and their families. Additionally, she has been a board member for the League for People with Disabilities, where she served on the advisory committee for Camp Greentop, a therapeutic recreation camping program that her daughter attended. She is also active in the Transverse Myelitis Association and has participated in Kennedy Krieger’s Activity Based Restorative Therapy programs.
A former board member of the General Alumni Association of The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Becky has chaired the Baltimore Carolina Club and assisted in the Morehead-Cain Scholar selection process at UNC.
Becky’s writing acumen is a family attribute. Her father, Dr. R.F. Smith, was a reverend and author in Huntington, West Virginia. In 1997, shortly before Becky’s paralysis, he completed his book, Sit Down, God…I’m Angry about the loss of Forest, his 17-year-old son and Becky’s younger brother. She has continued to write her father’s newspaper columns since his death in 2003.
Becky’s memoir, Rethinking Possible–A Memoir of Resilience, chronicles her lifelong quest to create that closely-knit family feeling she knew before her brother’s death at age seventeen. A second title, “From Where I Sit…you won’t believe the view I have!”, a book of her elected columns, will follow.
A Morehead-Cain Scholar at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Becky has fifteen years of experience in sales, marketing and human resources. She was employed by IBM, where she was the recipient of the Golden Circle award for marketing excellence, and by Drake Beam Morin, a world leader in human resources consulting.
A native of Hickory, North Carolina, and Huntington, West Virginia, Becky resides in Lutherville, Maryland, near Baltimore.
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