Living Bravely,
Vulnerably
and Hopefully
By Jeff Finley
pg. 24 — lightandlifemagazine.com
urfm You are the church
Alyssa Galios lost her husband, Nick Magnotti, to
cancer at age 27 when their daughter was only nine
months old. While facing intense struggles and doubts,
she eventually found renewed faith in God along with
an unexpected relationship with one of Nick’s longtime
friends, Jay Galios.
Alyssa, now a 32-year-old mother of three, is helping
thousands of other people through her book, “Made for
Brave: A Journey Through Devastating Loss to Infinite
Hope,” along with sharing her story on podcasts and in
other venues that don’t typically host Christian authors.
Amid her busy schedule that includes running Made for
Brave Fitness and Coaching, Alyssa graciously spent an
hour on the phone answering LIGHT + LIFE’s questions
about her life and her writing. Space constraints won’t allow
this magazine to share many of the ways God has worked in
her life, but the best way to learn more of her heartbreaking
and inspiring life story is to visit alyssagalios.com and to
order “Made for Brave.”
You may have seen Nick — who died on Jan. 7, 2014,
of mucinous adenocarcinoma (a form of appendix cancer)
— in a popular November 2013 video, “Young Man Battles
Cancer With A Smile,” that is available at fmchr.ch/nickvideo
via YouTube where it has more than 1.1 million views. The
video was uploaded by Alyssa but never monetized to
receive money from advertising. She has received multiple
requests from media companies seeking permission to
republish the video (some of which have added subtitles
in other languages), and she doesn’t charge them to use it.
Nick was still alive when the initial requests came, and he
wanted the video freely available to spread hope.
“It’s been really incredible to see it go so far and so wide,”
she said. “You never know how many lives you’re impacting
for the better, and that is such a testament to Nick and the
life that he lived and the faith that he lived up until his last
day.”
Shifting Priorities
Early in “Made for Brave,” Alyssa writes about “working
insane hours in those first several years of marriage.” Alyssa
told LIGHT + LIFE that instead of having an “eternity
mindset,” she initially had a “here-and-now mindset that I
needed to achieve certain things as fast as I could and that
included getting a great big house, buying the right cars,
wearing the right clothes.”
She said that when Nick was first diagnosed “with cancer
and had his subsequent surgery and was declared cancer-free
before the cancer unexpectedly reappeared, that
was really a wakeup call for us on how little time we had
spent together. We had been married for three years, and
our only vacation time had been our honeymoon. We had
been working our tails off, each working 60-plus hours a
week, and we both loved our jobs. We loved our clients,
and we loved our community members, but, at the end of
the day, we weren’t spending any time intentionally on our
relationships with each other and not even close to enough
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