Sheryl Sandberg on Grief, Resilience in New Book

Two years ago, I lost my husband Dave unexpectedly. And as anyone who's been through something like this will tell you, it's really the unimaginable. Life changes and felt like there was a void kind of closing in on me, preventing me from breathing. My brother-in-law Rob described it as a boot pressing on his chest, and I didn't know what to do and how to get through it. So I turned to my friend Adam Grant, who's a psychologist, and I said to him, 'What do I do? How do I get my kids through this?' I was so worried that my children would never be happy again, that their happiness would have been destroyed in that instant we lost their father. And what Adam said to me is that the sadness never goes away entirely, and of course it doesn't. I miss him every day, but that there were steps I could take to help my kids and myself recover. Option B is our attempt to share what we learned from people who've studied this for a really long time, but also just amazing people that have faced all forms of adversity and really come out on the other side. And what I learned is that we're not born with a fixed amount of resilience. It's really a muscle, and we can build it. We build it in ourselves, we build it in our children, we build it in each other. Dave lived, my husband, an amazing life of giving to so many people. He really was so generous. And I think if anyone can get help from this book recovering from anything, it really honors the life he led.

I thought a lot about this when I wrote Lean In. I talked about people who are single parents and different challenges women face, but I wrote a whole chapter called 'Make Your Partner a Real Partner.' And looking back on it, I realized that might have been so hard to read for people that don't have a partner at all. And I did a post on this last Mother's Day where I said, 'I didn't get this. You know, being a single mother is harder than parenting with Dave, particularly with grieving children, and I don't face the financial challenges so many single mothers face, and it's unacceptable that we don't give the women and the men and the children in our country who need our help the help they deserve.' 37% of single mothers live in poverty, 40% if you're Black or Latina. That means that the people who most need our help don't get it. And this is something I feel very strongly we need to fix. When people face hardship or tragedy, whether it's illness or something happening to a family member or loss, we need to do more to help them, and we don't do it. Companies need to do more. I'm really lucky Facebook had great policies, bereavement policies, leave policies in place before, but after Dave died, I worked with my team to extend them even further. We now give 20 days for bereavement of an immediate family member and 10 days for an extended family member. Most people get almost no time off at all, no paid time off. And so our companies need to do better. We also can't always rely on our companies. Not everyone works for a company that can do the right thing or will do the right thing, and not everyone is employed. And that means we need public policies. We are the only developed country in the world that does not offer paid maternity leave, let alone paternity leave. We do not give people the time off they need and the paid time off they need to take care of themselves and loved ones. And I feel strongly we need to do better.

I found out online and she was like, 'I haven't told my dad.' Of course you would find out. She's really upset. I was like, I feel so lucky to have had the support of Mark Zuckerberg, not just in my career but through this loss. Mark was at my house the first morning I got home. Mark helped plan the funeral. And Mark did something really important, which is he helped build me back up. And this really took me by surprise. I'd read about grief, so I had heard about the anger, the sorrow, the isolation. But what I hadn't really thought about was how loss in one area of your life can really destroy your self-confidence. I mean, I wrote a whole book for women on self-confidence, but when Dave died, it made me feel like I couldn't do anything. You know, how could I do a good job at work when I could barely get through a meeting without crying? How could I parent when I had no idea how to parent grieving children? So when I lost Dave, I had all the grief, but I also felt increasingly isolated because people were afraid to talk about it. They kind of looked at me like I was a deer in the headlights. All the easy interactions I used to have, dropping my kids at school, coming into the office, were gone. And so grief led to isolation, led to more grief, led to more isolation. And part of what I hope Option B does is kick those elephants out of the room so we can start talking to each other.